


Pohjola: Immigrant Song

by Naoe, skyhighjelly



Series: Pohjola: Destiel Adventures in Finnish Hell [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Angels, Case Fic, Christmas, Dcbb 2017, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge 2017, Epic Witches, Finnish Mythology - Freeform, Garuda - Freeform, Gnomes, Hunters, Kalevala, Lucille - Freeform, M/M, Magic, Magic Truck, New Mexico, Nordic Mythology - Freeform, Phoenix!Castiel, Portals, Santa Village, Snakes, Supernatural is no secret, Trolls, Ukko's Hammer, dragon - Freeform, hunter!dean, misuse of souls, no demons, those damn pixies...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-01 16:32:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 44,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12708729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naoe/pseuds/Naoe, https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyhighjelly/pseuds/skyhighjelly
Summary: There has been a mysterious set of deaths in prisons, killing off everyone, and the disappearance of complete villages that has Hunters Dean Winchester and Charlie Bradbury investigating northern New Mexico for any trails. It's while Charlie is coaxing the most powerful--if bitchy--witch they know into giving them a hand that Dean meets a strange (but HOT) guy, who saves his life a few times.If you're looking for an adventure in a Santa Village, with snakes, dragons, witches, Scandinavian goddesses, gods, gnomes, trolls, and a magic truck, then this is your pit stop! Welcome to Pohjola!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this is my 2017 DCBB! I want to thank PBJ*fish/skyhighjelly for being wonderful! I absolutely loved working with her and her art is gorgeous! [[Her Tumblr](http://peanutbutter-jelly-fish.tumblr.com)] [[ Her AO3 ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/skyhighjelly)]
> 
>  **MASTER ART POSTS** : [ [T](http://peanutbutter-jelly-fish.tumblr.com) ] // [ [AO3 ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12796764)]
> 
> I need to thank [@Shipperslist ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ShippersList/pseuds/ShippersList)for helping me with this and for being a lot of the inspiration. She helped me clarify a lot of the Finnish language, myths, and such. Always wonderful! Love ya!
> 
> Unfortunately, due to the sheer probable length, this is the first part of this story. It can be read stand-alone, but it's not over.
> 
> Any footnotes or endnotes are there for clarification, not because everyone would need or want them.
> 
> Lastly, the people of the village are vaguely **VAGUELY** based on the Sami of Scandinavia. That is, the native peoples of that area are called the Sami and they are spread across the three nations and possibly further (I'm no expert). It ended up that way but no disrespect or cultural appropriation was intended. Same goes for some brief Hindu/Buddhist renditions. Seriously, most of this is from my imagination and how much the Santa Village in Colorado freaked me out as a kid.
> 
> Oh, no demons. No angels. Just various religions and the knowledge magic is REAL.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fate, country western, vampires, and booze. Not necessarily in that order.

The first Cas saw him, he was entranced.

The tall broad-shouldered man with the chestnut hair faded high and tight on his head walked into the bar like he owned it, all loose muscles and confident smiles in his black leather jacket and dark jeans, silver glinting off his hands, wrists, and ears. He had scanned the room briefly, and Cas saw that he had taken note of windows and exits, his eyes pausing for a millisecond on them, before reaching the bar and leaning forward to smile winningly at the bartender.

Tonight, the bartender was Liz, with strawberry blonde hair and bright blue eyes, and he watched as she also flicked her eyes over the gorgeous man and leaned forward, elbows on the bar, to listen to him speak.

With narrowed eyes, Cas watched the man whisper something in Liz’s ear that made her sag slightly as she laughed, and she grinned back at the man, reaching out her right hand to touch him teasingly, before settling back onto her side of the bar. She threw her head back slightly, her eyes on the smirking man, her curly red hair bouncing behind her as she walked over to the taps and drew out a pint.

The man tapped his fingers on the bar top, his many silver rings glinting in what crappy light the bar had. But Cas didn’t need the bar’s light to see. He watched the fingers tap out a rhythm out of tune with the country music the bar’s patrons preferred. The guy’s lips smiled and he flirted, but it barely reached his eyes, eyes Cas was sure were hazel from where he sat. The dim lighting and the dark jeans the guy wore couldn’t hide the bowing of the man’s legs or the nervous jerk of his left knee. He was anxious, more anxious than he let on, his earrings (a Hand of Fatima, an ankh, and an Om?) trembling with it. Was he there to unwind? Or for some other purpose?

As Cas watched, the man turned, propping himself up on his elbows against the bar, his gaze slipping past the corner Cas was sitting in, a gleam of light hitting the man just right to give a glimmer of color to his eyes: green. It was enough to make Cas curious to know what this predatory man with the easy smile and smooth movements was doing in his (temporary) territory.

Liz put the man’s beer on the bar and he turned again, briefly, to hand her a bill fished out of the black leather jacket, looking like he was waving off change. The jacket was odd, but New Mexico nights did get chilly in November, Cas supposed, as he personally didn’t feel the cold.

The guy turned back towards the bar crowd and just watched, smiling at women, nodding recognition at men. The earrings in his left ear were also in interesting shapes and caught Cas’s intense attention. From here, they looked like a cross, a Star of David, an Aquarian star, and a Buddha, all just small enough to be overlooked, but just enough, Cas guessed, to add some protection, much like the others in his right ear. It was eclectic, but they didn’t shine in his vision as much as those heavy silver rings.

Regardless, it looked like he was scoping the place out, looking for something or someone in particular. Maybe not looking for a confrontation, but looking alert while comfortably watching people interact and sipping his beer.

Curiosity eating at him, Cas unfolded himself from the small broken-down booth he liked to sit at most evenings–just watching people interact, fall in love, fight, and dance–and meandered towards the guy. He sidled next to him, motioning Liz for a beer.

She smiled and nodded at him, as she mixed drinks for the very loud table of women. They were obviously drunk, some of them trying to dance in a line, while one of them was mysteriously draped in what looked like realistic dildos and who was whooping out things like, “I’m getting married this weekend!”

As he waited, he half turned and said, “Busy night. I’m a regular here, but you’re not a familiar face…?”

The guy turned to eye him, his features schooled into deliberate friendliness, and replied, “Nah, just in town for the weekend. My friend’s best friend is having some sort of important celebration this weekend and she asked me to bring her.”

Cas thought that over and nodded. “Couldn’t say no?”

The guy chuckled over the rim of his beer, lips beautifully bowed. “Not to her. Anyway, we needed a break.”

Now that he was close enough, he could accurately see the man’s aura. It was red, passionate and violent, but at the center, it was a cool and beautiful purple, with the brightest white-light core, the inner mental stratum thinly layered with depressed yellows. A tendril of pink sexual interest flickered through as he looked over Cas: the worn jeans, his gray shirt with a sock monkey on it, and his messy hair.

But the aura was interesting.

This was a man who was centered but drenched in violence, living a _passionate_ and _vibrant_ life, and that probably meant he was a Hunter. Or a serial killer. But considering what Hunters _did_ , probably both.

But this was _Cas’s_ territory. If there were other monsters in the area that needed killing instead of tolerating, Cas needed to know. What was this guy doing here, what he was _hunting_ in Cas’s town?

Needing to know, he reached out a hand. “My name is Cas Chayton.”

The guy eyed the hand for a moment before reaching out his own with a faint smile. “Yeah, Roger Waters.”

Cas blinked as the man’s aura flickered minutely. _A lie_.

The palm that rested in his was calloused but warm. The fingers were strong and firm, and the slight jolt of electricity that bounded up Cas’s arm was surprising. He looked into ‘Roger’s’ eyes and saw the same surprise reflected there. So he wasn’t the only one who had felt that?

“‘Roger,’ huh?” Cas smiled warmly and pulled back his hand. The guy, _Roger_ , smirked back.

“How long you been in this town?”

Cas paused as Liz dropped off his beer, digging into his jeans and passing her a five.

“I’ve been here about a year and a half,” he said when she stepped away to deal with someone on the other side, sipping the cold lager and licking the foam away from his top lip. He would have had to been blind not to see Roger’s eyes tracking his tongue, and he teasingly licked his bottom lip too. Fixing his heavy-framed glasses, he added. “It’s a nice little town. Quiet.”

Roger smirked and took a swig of his beer. “Not too quiet.”

Cas thought about what he had heard recently around town, but there really was nothing close to home. A prison in the northeast of the state had recently had an illness that had swept through the inmates, leaving everyone dead, and the CDC baffled, but nothing else had happened, as far as he knew. “You know something I don’t?”

Taking a long draught of his beer to finish it off, Roger gasped and smacked his lips, green eyes hooded, as he replied, “Not at all.”

He dropped his glass down on the counter, waved at Liz, slapped Cas on the shoulder and winked. “Maybe I’ll see you around, Cas.”

With that, he slipped out of the bar doors into the night.

It took Cas everything in him to wait ten minutes before following him out, needing to know what the beautiful Hunter was hiding from him. 

Dean Winchester hated little towns. Pestilence and War, the widespot in the road Meg had holed up in northern New Mexico was barely a village, much less a town. But he supposed a witch like Meg needed ley lines and whatever other shit she said was required to do her magic. He didn’t care; he just wanted a drink.

Charlie had demanded that they visit Meg for her birthday, and to get her to help them with whatever was killing men in prisons in the surrounding states. Between Dean’s vast experience over the last thirty years and Charlie’s technical skills, they had tracked its home base down to northern New Mexico, but the trail had run cold and New Mexico was far too big, even cut in half, to just guess.

So Charlie went to butter up Meg (and attend her party) and Dean got the Gehenna out of there because Meg hated him and he hated witches. Witch parties _tended_ to have a lot of witches in attendance, and he and his profession were definitely persona non-grata at those.

After dropping Charlie off at the base of the mountain (because Baby was not made for shitty dirt trails), it had taken him a good hour to get out of the backwoods where Meg lived and back to (relative) civilization and a bar. He had rented a room at the one tiny motel in the town, and found what he would’ve called a honkytonk had he been anywhere else in the country. There were more cowboy hats and giant belt buckles than he was used to, and they were playing songs with too much twang, but he had been informed by the front desk that there was only one bar in town. It was past nine, and the one market in the town had closed at 6pm, so no hope for a six-pack and some bad TV. It was bogus as Sheol’s gold gate and Dean was dying for a beer.

Consequently, he was going to have to keep company with shitkickers to get his wish: one beer and to scope out the joint, then get out. If he got lucky, good. If he didn’t, fine.

He just needed some downtime after the shit fest in Albuquerque. He hadn’t even known there could be that many fucking vampires in one damn city! It was amazing there were still homeless wandering the streets, but the sad thing was no one had noticed the uptick in lower- to middle-class deaths over the last five years except for Charlie. The little bad ass, she had sniffed it out, triangulated the most likely sites, and they had investigated them one by one. Because of that, they hadn’t even had time to call in back up when they had stumbled into the old deserted hospital and into the full nest.

Even after a week of downtime and a crapload of whatever that magic elixir that Meg gave to Charlie for bad wounds (it stunk like dirt and dead flowers but worked like the charm it was), he still felt the ache in his back from being thrown against a wall, an old nursing station, and a concrete separator as they tried to run from the bottom feeders while looking for the big game. He hated fucking thralls, with their mindless, rabid attacks. Get a bunch of them together and it was like getting swarmed by rats. Big rats. Rats of unusual size, just a giant mischief of them with vamp venom bites and each ten times stronger than the average human. At least the _moroi_ were somewhat intelligent for freakin’ vampire middle management. Most nests had a large number of alluring moroi, larger number of mindless thralls, and one alpha _strigoi_ to rule them all.

This nest had been huge, having fed off the large city of 350,000 or so for the last year. Possibly longer than that to have built up their numbers to that extent.

So, really, it had been nothing short of a miracle that Charlie hadn’t broken her arm again when the vamps’ “alpha” had tried to crush her wrist before getting Dean’s machete through his neck. The other vamps had frozen as the alpha’s control slipped free and they attempted to essentially reboot. That let Dean and Charlie sweep through them, knocking off heads like watermelons off stumps.

Regardless of the ease towards the end, they hadn’t been expecting a full damn nest, and that was on Dean. He was supposed to know better, having grown up under the legendary John Winchester and the Goddess with a Machete, Mary Campbell-Winchester.

Not that he had gotten enough time with her, but–he stopped his train of thought, as it was about to collide with his ego and wreck him into a knot.

Whatever. That was yesterday.

Today was a new day! After a full three hours of driving just to get to the village in middle-of-nowhere New Mexico, and Dean was ready for a break. Any break. Just _something_ different that didn’t stink of copper-heavy vamp blood or fucking osha. He was so bone tired.

The motel was tiny, but pretty clean for Bum-fuck-Egypt, and, having parked his Baby up front, he carried in his duffle bag and dropped it on the queen-sized bed with a low thud.

After a whore’s bath and a clean black Henley, he made his way to the bar, the Amigos Inn.

He had walked because the motel was close by and there had been no real supernatural activity in the little town with the name he never remembered. At least not in the dozen or so times he had visited or passed through over the last five years. EMF remained clean, and rumors of supernatural goings-on were below average. It was unlike most of New Mexico, which seemed to be infested with skinwalkers, wendigos, and chupacabras. When he was a teen, they had passed through other parts of New Mexico a few times when his Dad had decided to teach Sam and him how to kill chupacabras without getting bitten.

(The nasty little buggers stank like rotted cheese and copper tubing, but the bounties from the local farmers had made it worth their while.)

Dean had bagged his first one at twelve and had nearly lost a finger doing it. Sam never enjoyed it, but he dutifully wrangled them as he was taught by the time he was thirteen.

Of course, Dean’s little brother never did like killing things. It would explain why Sam had high tailed it to California as soon as Dad got ambushed by a shapeshifter. Man was barely cold when Sam announced he was leaving to become a lawyer.

Now he was in Chicago somewhere with his pretty Literature professor wife, defending people from their own mistakes. A fucking bleeding-heart defense lawyer. Possibly the DA for all Dean knew, since they didn’t talk but once in a while because Sam tried to keep as much distance between his old life and his current one as he could.

It was fine.

Dean understood. Sam had always craved normality. The steady beat of it as it held him to the earth, locked into a pattern with very few deviations. It had filled a hole in Sam, having a permanent home, a solid wife, and a fulltime job.

In comparison, Dean was a mess, just like his old man. He was covered in scars from claws and teeth that had healed in small mounds on his skin. Not even all the protective tattoos could hide them. His left forearm was nothing but raised scars from all the cutting on it to release blood for rituals. It was one of the reasons he generally wore a flannel shirt or jacket all the time. It stymied a lot of the questions and stopped the fear when people saw the multitude of white lines. He had broken his nose way too many times, and he was sure that he had scared quite a few people when he removed his shirt, what with the claw marks and stabbing scars.

Luckily, he was a skilled enough con man–with a wickedly agile tongue–to usually get them over their fear.

So here he was now, in a damn shitty little town bar, with a decent beer, a pretty enough bartender, a mostly drunk bachelorette party, and a large group of men (and a sprinkling of women) gathered around the two pool tables. The jukebox was playing something about a Redneck Woman that made the bachelorette party whoop and stand, trying to drunkenly improvise a line dance.

Dean watched for a moment, but they weren’t all that attractive or that interesting to him.

He turned to stare at the pool players, propping himself up against the bar with a beer in hand. He had just taken a drink and was wondered if there was anything other than country on the jukebox, when he felt someone sidle up next to him.

Dean tried to suppress his interest as a very good-looking guy with crazy mussed hair in gray sock monkey shirt had moved next to him and was trying to get the bartender’s attention. The guy ordered a beer and turned to look at Dean, his eyes knocking the breath out of Dean as they were incredibly blue, even from behind the thick lenses of his hipster-esque black-rimmed glasses. A nearly mystical blue that seemed to look past him and straight into him. That was unnerving.

“Busy night. I’m a regular here, but you’re not a familiar face...?”

The man’s voice was gruff and it surprised Dean. He wasn’t expecting such a low timbre to come out of what seemed to be a very scrawny man. The t-shirt and jeans on him were baggy, hanging off his thin frame, while Dean estimated the guy was an inch or so shorter than he was.

“Nah, just in town for the weekend. My friend’s best friend is having some sort of important celebration this weekend and she asked me to bring her.”

The guy thought that over–brow furrowed–and nodded. “Couldn’t say no?”

Dean chuckled over the lip of his beer. “Not to her. Anyway, we needed a break.”

More staring. It made Dean twitch and he was about to gulp down his beer and bounce when the fellow reached out a hand. “My name is Cas Chayton.”

Dean stared at it for a moment. He had pure blessed silver rings on his fingers with iron etched in the shape of crosses. It saved him two processes: he could punch (most) monsters and it would _hurt_ and it allowed him to test others. The look in this “Cas” guy’s eyes made Dean uncomfortable, and he trusted his gut. He reached out his hand, taking in the surprisingly smooth skin of the guy and startled by the small jolt that went up his arm. It wasn’t unpleasant; it felt more like something he should recognize. But if the guy was a monster, he didn’t show any reaction to the handshake. Smiling faintly, Dean replied, “Yeah, Roger Waters.”

The fellow was surprisingly easy to read, and Dean could tell he had not only spotted Dean’s lie, but that he was even vaguely amused by it. They talked for a minute and the guy revealed he wasn’t a born-and-bred native. That would explain why he looked like he’d be more comfortable in a Whole Foods than a hick-infested dive bar.

His features were distracting. The too-blue eyes. The sharp cheekbones. The pale pink lips that looked chapped. A wild desire lit inside him as Dean watched the guy lick foam off of them, a quick wet slide of a tongue. Beautiful eyes. Kissable lips. Wild hair…if Dean were trying to pull, he suspected Cas was at least willing, if the look he gave Dean from under those dark lashes meant anything.

The moment was broken when a small argument started up near the pool tables. Cas didn’t seem to notice, probably used to them fighting, but it brought him back to himself, and Dean realized he was about to be in trouble with this guy. Better to avoid it, since going to bed just sounded great to his exhausted mind. Maybe Cas would be here tomorrow?

With that thought, he chugged his beer and excused himself, needing to get out of the bar and away from the hot guy and the noisy people. His bed called and he was heeding its siren song.

With that, he slipped out of the bar doors into the night, pausing to stare up at the nearly full moon, his breath pluming from his lips as he sighed. The moon lent just enough light to let him see his way and the tiny motel was thankfully within walking distance.  

 _I should’ve bought a shot of whiskey_ , he thought, huffing into the night, sending up more mist into the dry night air. The nearest liquor store was on the boundary to the next small-ass town, and he was debating if he felt up to a forty-minute drive, when something picked him up by the shoulder and threw him into the side of a nearby truck.

Dean hit with enough force to hear the groan and crunch as the metal buckled, which just echoed the pained grunt he released as he popped out of the new dent like a muffin from a baking tin.

Dazed, he staggered as he tried to get up, only to fly again when a pointy shoe hit him sharply in the ribs, definitely cracking them from the sound of it. He yelped when he landed and tried to roll away, but a voice above him hissed, “Look what we found, Crystal! It’s the _Winchester_!”

Blinking through his pain and wheezing now, Dean could barely make out two teenagers grinning down at him. Crystal–all neon-pink hair with too-much mascara and black lipstick–was chewing gum loudly and he could just feel her smirking down at him while her companion kicked him in the gut for good measure. He idly wondered if he had busted a gut, as the pain was sharp and throbbed darkly.

“Think you can just come into _our_ nest and kill everyone?” The phrase was punctuated with more kicks, until Dean was gasping for breath and groaning in serious pain, blood streaming from his mouth into a puddle under him.

A hand wove into his hair and yanked him up, and he choked back a scream as nails raked his scalp and tried to rip the fistful out. “I don’t know how this little Winchester _bitch_ was able to take down Father,” Crystal hissed out between her fangs, forcing Dean to bare his throat. “I say we drain him and throw him away like the trash he is!”

There was a bright flash of orange-ish light–blinding and sharp–and the young male screamed. The smell of fire and ash burnt into Dean’s nose and he cried out as Crystal flung him back to the asphalt with a shout of, “Israel!”

His head bounced with the move and he felt darkness claiming him, but not before he heard another unholy howl and witnessed another bright flash.

Dean tried to stay conscious, but when he fluttered his eyes open, all he could see through the spots in his vision from the intense light were bright blue eyes before his body decided to completely pass out.

When Dean came to, it was with an achy groan and a multitude of questions.

First of all, he was on a much softer surface than asphalt and much higher quality mattress than the typical motel bed. He opened one eye with a small grunt of effort and took note of his surroundings. There was one window that was heavily covered with curtains, leaving the room dim, and a cautious shift let him look down the bed and eye the plush bedding.

Better bed than he’d slept in for years.

Secondly, when he assessed his body, his pain levels were at a surprising unhappy three with some small movements shooting him a bit towards a sour-faced five, particularly his left hip. Nothing felt broken for once, just dull aches in his shoulder and ribs, that slightly sharper pain from his hip. His head throbbed a bit, but he’d had worse headaches. He sucked in a breath at the sharpness in his head, and then felt amazed he _could_ breathe because he had been sure he had broken some ribs and even punctured a lung. Seriously, after the beating he had received, Dean had been sure he would have been at a wretched “put me out of my misery” eight or nine, if he had survived.

So that one, he was alive, and, two, he wasn’t at “just let me die” eight or nine, were nice (if shocking) surprises.

Thirdly, where the fuck was he? The only furniture he could make out in the dim lighting beyond the bed was what looked like a rickety chest of drawers and a second (possibly third) hand nightstand with areas stripped of stain. A glass of water and two pills sat there, and Dean guessed they were for him. There was a familiar busted cell phone that he reached for with a groan. The screen was completely shattered with pieces actually missing and the body was bent in two, so Dean figured the vamp must’ve hit it when he was being kicked.

The answer for “how he got here,” at least, came as the door crept open and the messy-haired fellow with the thick glasses peered inside, a breakfast tray balanced in one hand.

 _Bacon_ , Dean thought greedily. _I smell bacon_.

The guy—Dean vaguely remembered his name was Cas—smiled awkwardly and half-hoisted the tray as he stepped into the room. He was wearing a blue t-shirt and jeans, and from the lack of sound, Dean figured he was either barefoot or in socks. Cas fidgeted and shifted the half-hefted tray for Dean to see.

“Uh, hi. I brought you some breakfast. I hope you’re up for bacon and pancakes?”

“Bacon and pancakes?”

Cas shrugged and balanced the tray on the nightstand carefully before leaning over Dean to help him sit up. “I don’t eat eggs,” he rasped in that deep voice of his. “I hope this is okay?”

Dean grimaced and suppressed a groan as pillows were rearranged and Cas helped him sit up.

It took him a moment to realize that he was shirtless, with nothing but bandages covering his scars and tattoos. He scowled and shifted to ease pressure off his left side, but it still hurt a bit to sit up.

“Is it too painful?” Cas asked as he settled Dean in.

Dean shook his head. “Nah. Had worse,” he grumbled.

Cas nodded. “Must be hard to be a Hunter,” he murmured, moving the tray to Dean’s lap carefully.

Dean started and narrowed his eyes at Cas. The man looked innocent enough, but Hunters didn’t generally stick out from normal folks. They _were_ a known group, but they hid in the fringes of society keeping the big bads—master vampires, wendigos, women-in-white, rougarus—from killing off humanity. The general public was well aware of ghosts and magic users (most doctors were legitimately witch doctors nowadays), and they were even somewhat aware of wild things like chupacabras and even faeries, but the fact Cas had deduced that Dean was a Hunter from their short meeting (or his nakedness) either meant he was a Hunter himself or he had known Hunters.

“How’d you even figure that out?” Dean asked with careful intonation. He didn’t want to agitate Cas into possibly violent behavior, even if he had been kind and helpful up until now. People who knew Hunters, after all, did not tend to be the best people.

Cas blinked at him owlishly through the thick lenses that magnified those blue eyes. “Well, I would say it was your tattoos, but really it’s all the scars.”

He pointed at Dean’s left forearm where the bulk of his cutting for spells had occurred. “I would presume that is from spellwork. I’ve met plenty of witches and mages to know they occasionally have to use blood, but they also use healing ointments and small healing spells to fix it and leave no raised scars.”

“The only people I’ve ever met stupid enough to hurt themselves like that for the ‘greater good’ have been Hunters.” Cas shrugged, his finger quotations looking ridiculous.

It was hard to disagree with that assessment, especially when he was living proof. Dean chuckled and shook his head disbelievingly. “That’s rather harsh,” he said, poking at the pile of pancakes.

He pointed at Dean’s ears and a tiny smile quirked his lips. “Plus you have several symbols from several dominations of Faith. That’s always a clue.”

Dean snorted. Of course. He had changed his Mom’s Hunter charm bracelet into something more usable for him, but if someone knew about Hunters, it was a (small) giveaway.

He started to stab the bacon when he noticed there was a glass of orange juice, but no coffee.

“Not to seem ungrateful, but do you have any coffee?”

Cas tilted his head slightly and eyed Dean again, making Dean regret asking. “I do,” he replied slowly, “But I fear it would interact poorly with some of the medication I gave you.”

“Is it going to kill me?”

Frowning, Cas replied, “No. But…”

“I’ll take my chances, if you don’t mind.”

Cas sighed and turned to get the coffee when Dean remembered something important and sharply asked, “Wait! What happened to the vampires?”

“Vampires?” Cas turned enough to frown at him.

Dean ignored Cas’s confusion and snapped, “How did you explain my injuries if you didn’t see me get attacked?”

“I didn’t.” He huffed out a breath. “I walked out of the bar and you were lying on the asphalt bleeding.” Cas scowled faintly and added, “There were two piles of ash nearby, but vampires? Here?”

“There was a huge nest in Albuquerque. They must’ve tracked me here,” Dean murmured, relaxing as the immediate threat of vamps was gone. “So no idea what killed them?”

“I didn’t even think those piles of ash were vampires until you mentioned them,” Cas said as he went presumably to get Dean’s coffee.

Watching Cas with suspicion, Dean muttered, “I just bet.”

_How did he know about vampires? Who was this guy?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're wondering about the "Moroi/Strigoi" stuff, it comes from Romanian mythology, so if you watch The Strain, you'll know. I am putting them on different managerial levels for shits and grins.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meeting Meg and regretting every moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read Footnotes if you like. They're mostly me commenting. Nothing important.
> 
>  
> 
>  **POLYAMORY NOTE** : I know how I present polyamory is not how it technically works, but a friend of mine (coincidentally a witch) practiced it like this. So I used it.  

It took Dean more time than he liked to be able to move without groaning in pain like a 90-year-old man. At least he wasn’t ripped to shreds like he feared he’d be when he got jumped by two angry, teenage moroi vampires like a novice. (He was seriously pissed about that.)

When he finally joined Cas in the dining room, it was not without taking a small stroll around the tiny living room…which they were basically the same room so it didn’t take long. The cabin (he inferred from the wood ceilings and stone hearth) was small, with what looked like two bedrooms, a tiny bathroom with no tub, just a shower, and an open-plan kitchen slash dining room slash living room.

He had been informed there was an aged, rotary house phone, but no internet, no computer, gods save him—not even a TV. Cas had looked uncomfortable and admitted he wasn’t good with technology.

Which explained the gas stove that had to be lit by hand and the speckled-blue metal coffee pot that sat on it, the sort people took camping but didn’t actually use _in_ the house.

“So Cas,” he grunted as he forced his left leg to take weight and move, “You got any friends or family in this burg?”

Dean settled into one of the dining room’s two chairs with a low moan and more grunting. His hip was being tetchy and didn’t want to move properly. He figured it was it was the one that had put the massive dent in that oversized pickup. (He remembered _quite clearly_ being hurled at it and landing solidly against the side.)

“I prefer isolation,” Cas replied solemnly, adding what looked like too much hot sauce to his hash browns and sausage. “It suits me better to have limited interaction with people, as my 'people skills' are somewhat…lacking, I’m told.”

“But you’re a regular at that bar,” Dean said as he dove into his own hash browns and sausage.

Cas shrugged. “I have been for the past year, but you might have noticed I was alone.”

“I actually didn’t notice.” Dean bit off some sausage from the link. “In fact, I didn’t _notice_ you until you walked up.” He leaned forward in his chair as he swallowed the bite. “What _are_ you?”

Cas blinked at him from behind his glasses and canted his head slightly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you know what Hunters are, you recognized piles of ash as vampires, _and_ you escaped my notice.” Dean stabbed the other half of the sausage savagely with his fork. “People do _not_ typically escape my notice.” He waved the stabbed sausage at Cas. “Especially when they’re…”

He felt a flush start up his neck as he realized he was about to say, “Hot.” Instead, he shoved the spicy meat into his maw and chewed aggressively.

Squinting at him, Cas shoveled more hash browns into his mouth. He swallowed and asked, “You do know there are quite a few witches and familiars in this area?”

Dean nodded. “Yeah, but you ain’t a witch. I can smell a witch a mile away.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “They all smell like that osha crap. Makes me gag.”[1]

Cas chuckled, his lips quirking into a half-smile again. “Well, I am friends with a few of them.” The blue eyes peered at him and Dean suddenly felt nervous, like his soul was being dissected. “Plus it’s _unusual_ to know about the supernatural. It doesn’t mean it’s a big secret.”

Dean had to shrug because it was true. People preferred not to know more about the things that went ‘bump in the night’ than it was Hunters trying to keep it quiet. Typical (small) things that went ‘bump in the night’ and could be stopped with a bit of iron and salt were an entirely a different kettle of fish because they were common, like cockroach infestations or mice, except it was pixies and ghosts.

Huffing at Cas’s evasion, he reached for the hot sauce and was startled again when Cas reached out a hand and stopped him, shaking his head slowly. “That…I’m afraid that probably will not agree with you. It’s…exceedingly spicy.”

“Exceedingly spicy?” _He talks like a dictionary. What the fuck?_

Dean pulled his hand away and turned the hot sauce bottle to look at the label. “The hottest sauce in the universe?” He chuckled and turned the bottle to eye the ingredients. “Tartarus’s grove! _Forty pounds of ghost peppers in each batch?!”_ His eyes bulged. “Are you kidding me?”

Cas blushed faintly.  “I like spicy things,” he murmured, “But I don’t suggest it. It’s supposedly 700 times hotter than Tabasco, so…”[2]

Dean shook his head incredulously and laughed. “Wow, you win, man. That would have killed me from the inside out!”

Cas coughed uncomfortably and poked at his saturated hash browns. “Food is very spicy where I grew up,” he murmured, scooping up another bite and eating it like it was nothing.

Dean skeptically watched him do it but shrugged and ate his nice, not-deadly food in peace. “By the way,” he added as Cas picked up his dishes, “My name is Dean. Since you know I’m a Hunter and you saved me, I figure I owe you that much.”

“Thank you, Dean,” Cas murmured in that deep voice. “My name is still Cas.” He flicked a brief smile at Dean that took his breath away and put his dishes in the sink to wash.

Later, while Dean helped dry the dishes, he asked if they could turn on the radio, since he really hadn’t spotted a TV anywhere. Cas pointed him towards an aging monstrosity that had Dean grinning because it was _just like Cas_ in that it was antiquated tech. It looked like it had been ripped from the 70s, and the oddly bent rabbit-ear antennae alone made him want to cackle with nostalgia.

His _mom_ had had a radio like that from her teen years. He remembered seeing it in the kitchen as a kid.

Dean fiddled with it while Cas got them more coffee, and, when he found a station, they listened as they enjoyed their tasty beverage. When the news came on, Dean leaned forward a bit. He was lamenting his broken phone and how easy it was to look up stuff on it, especially the news. Since he’d gotten hurt, he had no idea what was going on in the world and it was driving him _insane_.

It was all made worse because he couldn’t reach Charlie to check in. It said something about his dependence on technology that he didn’t have her number memorized. It was also a pain to remember it when they generally kept burner phones. Not that it mattered, he rationalized, as Meg’s place was in a dead zone and Dean hadn’t memorized _her_ satellite phone number (it was on his _phone_ , for fuck’s sake), while the ley lines messed with the wifi, not that Cas looked to have a computer of any sort.

As he was trying to figure out what his next move should be, the news switched to a new topic that piqued his interest enough to shake him from his thoughts.

 

 

> “… _Prison, Nevada, report a strange illness has hit the inmate population much as one did Northeast New Mexico Detention Center, the reportedly similar virus running rampant inside the facilities with a 100% death rate with exposure. The CDC has been again called in to contain the problem, but there is no indication of how this incident occurred. There have been whispers that renown warlock and virologist, Dr. Fergus Crowley, has been called back from Kenya to investigate the situation. Dr. Crowley had been in Kenya to look into the mutated Zika virus that has been infecting people and their babies since October of last year. With this being the fifth prison in the Western US to be hit with this mysterious contagion, however, with similar causalities noted in four towns across New Mexico and California that’s wiping the towns off the map, we look to the CDC and now Dr. Crowley for answers. Now, back to you Kenzie!”_

Dean shut his eyes and started cursing as Kenzie delivered the weather forecast (dry and chilly, with a 44% of snow). “I gotta get to Meg’s,” he grumbled. “Can you take me to my car, Cas?”

Cas blinked and nodded. “Certainly, but why is that bit of news so important?”

Dean swiped a hand over his face and rubbed his chin absently. “Let’s just say we’ve been looking into it since we aren’t sure it’s just a human problem. It’s too quick, too convenient in where it strikes.”

“Ah.” Cas hummed. “You think it’s a creature.”

“No, I said we don’t _know_ what it is.” He sighed. “My partner is talking to one of the witches from around here to see if she’ll give us some…help.”

“Help?” Cas squinted. “You mean divinatory magic.”

Dean grunted. “I _really_ don’t like calling it that.”

“It is what it is, Dean.”

Rolling his eyes, Dean grumbled, “Don’t I know it.”

The trip down to the motel was nerve-wracking as Cas’s old truck rattled and groaned its way down the mountain. The scruffy blue and white truck was _easily_ thirty-years-old, with a faded and tattered white-ish box camper in the truck bed, with its silver step, flimsy door with a colorful sticker map of the US, and all.

Dean hadn’t seen one like that in _years_. 

But despite the many questionable aspects of Cas’s truck, it paled in comparison to the first good look at his Baby.

When they pulled into the motel parking lot, Dean started to curse. “Aw… NO! Fucking vampires! WHAT THE FUCK?”

Before the truck even completely stopped (mostly because it was taking a moment to squeak to a full stop), Dean was (gingerly) hopping out. “AGH! Those **MOTHERFUCKERS**!”

The Impala was in her parking space in front of his room’s door, but “DIE WICHESTER” and “WE RULE! HUMANS DROOL!!” was spray painted across the sides. A beautifully written “NICE TO EAT YA SHITHEAD” was printed across the hood, a crude middle finger also drawn to add flavor. Insult to injury, they had broken all the windows, punctured all the tires, and managed to tear out the steering wheel.

“Fuck! I hope those dicks died slow and painfully,” Dean swore lowly, “I mean, what’s more chickenshit than fucking with a man’s automobile?! Don’t fuck with another man’s vehicle!”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cas frown and turn to rummage inside the camper as Dean circled the Impala nearly in tears. “It’s going to ruin the rims,” he bitched, running his hands through his hair. “And it might snow tonight! **_Aw man!_** ”

“Dean.” The warm deep voice took his attention off his Baby for a moment, as a package was shoved into his side. “Here. This should help protect it until it gets towed for service.”

Dean looked at the gray tarp that Cas was handing him with grateful eyes. “Yeah, I’m gonna need all my damn tires replaced.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose with irritation. “Those bastards. This is gonna cost a fortune!”

As he and Cas covered his Baby with the tarp, he started calculating the cost of new tires and wondering if he could find a garage nearby to borrow for a few hours. _So pissed!_

“I wish I could go back in time and stab those lampreys myself,” he muttered bitterly as he eyed a new fat scratch and dent on one of the rims.

Cas merely nodded and began walking back to his old junker, leaving Dean to stare at the Impala in grief.

It was a bit chilly out, enough to bring him to his senses, and, after packing up his few items into his duffle and hitching it over his shoulder, Dean found he was glad of his jacket as he walked over to the motel office. 

"I'm checking out, but I also need a tow to the best local mechanic," he told the bright-faced young woman at the front desk. She was too cheerful while wearing a blue uniform vest, in Dean's opinion. Perhaps it was because she was so young, maybe in her early twenties? 

"Oh, was there a problem?" Her smile was unrealistically happy and Dean suppressed a grimace. 

"Yeah, my car's been vandalized and I can't drive her to a garage." He tried not to sound bitter, but the round brown eyes and puckered mouth of the woman (whose name tag said "Myrtle") indicated he had failed. 

"Oh my gosh! Really!? That sort of thing never happens here! Should we call the sheriff?" 

"Well, I'm not happy to break your streak, but if you could get a tow truck to fetch her, I'd appreciate it. And no, no Sheriff. It's been taken care of." He sighed and rubbed a hand over the back of his head. "Look, I can't be here to deal with the mechanic because I have some business to attend to, but I'll be back because that car is my life." He pointed at her, ignoring how she had zeroed in her gaze on the tip of his finger. "DO NOT LET MY CAR GET MORE DAMAGED. I know exactly what is wrong, and I will be back as soon as I can to get her fixed."

Myrtle nodded slowly and then knocked off a completely off salute. "Yes, sir! Are you checking out too?"

Dean thought on it and nodded himself. "Yeah, I don't know how long this is gonna take. But give me this number, the mechanic who's gonna tow her, and I'll be in touch later today."

"Of course, sir. In fact, I'll just give you the night free, seeing as your car was vandalized in our lot." She smiled winningly again, as if that made everything better, and he barely stopped a snort of disbelief from escaping him.

"Fine," he said, taking a business card, writing "Myrtle" on it, and pushing it towards her. "Now, name and numbers. Please?"

"Oh sure! Let me call Lonnie now!" She dialed the number on the phone and then wrote it on the card: Lonnie Sanchez, Aztec Auto and Tow.

She quickly got "Lonnie" on the line, up to date on the situation, and briskly hung up. "Lonnie will be here later this afternoon. You can call after three, I think. Should be late enough." 

The creepy plastic smile flashed back into view and she gave him a thumbs up. "I certainly hope that's been settled to your satisfaction. If you provide your phone number...?"

"Ah, yeah, phone's busted. That's why I'll call later," he explained with a 'what can you do' shrug. "Tell Lonnie I'll pay in full when I get back."

"Yeah no, that's fine. Just remember when you call you mention Myrtle Manzi!" 

"Okay, I'll be sure to do that. Thanks, Myrtle." Dean gave her his own half-assed salute and escaped her Stepford grin, stuffing his hands into his leather jacket's pockets.

Waiting for him was the ugly blue-and-white truck, black exhaust just roiling out in dark, gassy hiccups, the engine sounding like a flock of pterodactyls were caught in it and systematically being killed, Cas peering out of it, looking for him.

“Are you coming?” Cas asked from the rolled-down window, the truck making a wicked growling sound to punctuate his question.

“Where to?” Dean wondered if Cas was honestly magical and could really read his thoughts. Then again, he mused, he didn’t even know what _he_ was going to do next.

“You said you needed to find your friend,” Cas said, eyes flashing brightly blue behind his glasses, “I’ll give you a ride.”

Dean shook his head. “Man, you don’t even know where I’m headed.”

Cas shrugged. “It’s not hard to guess. Powerful divination? Witch? I’m betting Megara.”

“Who? Megara?”

Cas rolled the window shut, the slight squeak in the mechanism audible now that Dean wasn’t swearing aimlessly at the dead vamps.

He got into the truck still grumbling, reckoning Cas had him all figured out when the only thing he knew about Cas was he knew about supernatural stuff, he didn’t eat eggs, and he didn’t like technology.

Oh, and his truck _sucked_.

As in retaliation for his thoughts, the truck belched a particularly foul ball of black exhaust that somehow managed to get inside the cab.

This is why his life blew goats like a mad chupacabra.

Megara’s house was set back in a deep part of the mountain, defended by nature’s wonders (boulders, mud, and impassable dirt roads), and basically hidden from most magical sight.

She liked Cas, so he was able to see the homestead, rather than accidentally drive off the mountain like many others had done. The ravine off the side of the mountain was frankly getting full of rusting vehicles and rotting corpses thanks to her powerful glamour on the place.

Out of the corner of his eye, Cas watched the Hunter, who was scowling fiercely out the window. His knee was vibrating up and down in agitation, and lips were pursed with sullenness.

He was still quite beautiful to Cas’s jaded sight.

Regardless of his irritation, the Hunter’s eyes were green and open, the solid goodness of his soul remarkable, although not without its scars and shadows. And yet, considering how long Cas had lived and how many humans he had met, it would not be a lie for him to say it was, undoubtedly, the loveliest one he’d ever seen.

Cas doubted that the Hunter understood that the sacred lines he had inked into his flesh also glowed protectively to Cas’s vision: the defensive sigils woven into the tattooed sleeves of his arms, hidden in the riotous dance of two long dragons on his left forearm and a two-faced god of some fiery sort holding onto sets of swords (he thought it was Agni, but wasn’t going to ask), and in the four Chinese creatures of compass, each one nearly alive on his skin, on his right arm; the large sigil of divine protection hidden in the swirls of the mandala that surrounded the huge beautifully colored Buddha tattoo on his back, obviously blessed; the spider lilies that filled in gaps and the small spells in tiny Sanskrit and Chinese calligraphy that brought them all together as protective.

It looked like it was mostly so ghosts or anything too malevolent couldn’t grab him, but vampires were basically jumped-up zombies, so although silver hurt them a bit, it didn’t do much more. Those sigils and protection spells didn’t work well against undead _flesh_. Well, **_any_** _flesh_. Spirit-based creatures and eaters of soul would be hard pressed to harm Dean, though, through those sigils.

The truck grumbled its way up the steep mountain road and Cas patted the dash fondly. He’d had the old thing for nearly three decades, and, even back then, it had been outmoded enough to be gifted to him by an old friend who had upgraded. Dean, on the other hand, not having the blessing of decades worth of experience with the truck, was gripping the door’s armrest hard enough to turn his knuckles white, his other hand pushing off the roof for stability as the vehicle swayed and bounced over the pitted road as if it had no suspension. And for all Cas knew, perhaps it no longer did?

“It’ll get us up there in one piece,” Cas said loudly, trying to ease Dean’s fear.

Dean flashed a crooked, terrified grin and a nod before turning to clutch onto the dash as they hit a deep pothole and the old truck grunted like it had been kicked in the metaphorical testicles.

“I certainly hope so,” he muttered, grimacing again as the truck growled as it took a new incline and shook like a beast. “My Baby has problems going up this road, but this seems _just so much_ worse somehow…”

Cas nodded to himself. The truck had carried him for such a long time, it really had developed something of a personality.

“Megara’s place is just a bit further up,” he said loudly over the clanking of loose bits of metal and the truck’s black-exhaust grunts

Fortunately, they passed a certain set of large pines that marked the official boundary sooner than Cas realized and there it was.

Megara’s house was set into the mountainside thanks to a natural cave that she had taken advantage of, building a wood and clay façade that hid the exact depths to which the cave system went. The system was extremely convenient, as there was a stream that trickled through the cracks of the mountain and, at the bottom of the caves, there was a node to a set of ley lines that generally just made Cas itchy with extra power, like he’d been covered with fire ants.

It let Megara be extremely self-reliant, after buying lamps to simulate sunlight so she could grow fruits and vegetables, and she even managed to keep some animals aside from her extremely grumpy calico, Marv, and her boxer-mix with a foul personality, Al.

He didn’t know how she did it. If he stayed out of the sun too long, he felt tired and restless.

She always just laughed at him and called him a wimp.

Cas maneuvered the truck into its usual spot when he visited, parking under the shelter of a shed made of pine and hidden by tall bushes so helicopters wouldn’t spy the vehicles.

Now that he thought about it, he really didn’t know how she had gotten all this work on the place done.

He also suspected he really didn’t want to know; Megara was more wanton that he approved of. Not that he judged, but there is wanton, and there is _wanton_.

He had sometimes wondered if she were descended from succubi?

Dean leaped out of the truck as it groaned to a stop, the brakes screeching their protest. Dean's face somewhat green around the edges, and he staggered towards the entrance without waiting for Cas.

Some gratitude, that.  
  
Cas exited his truck more leisurely, and by the time he reached Dean, he had already managed the security on Megara’s front door. Or it was easy until Dean was pushed back (with a hiss of pain) as a small redheaded creature leaped on him like a spider monkey.

“Dean!” It exclaimed, wrapping around him.

Cas frowned and waited to see if Dean was going to require help, but the creature (a woman, it turned out) had heard the hiss and quickly let herself down. “Oh my Hermione, are you hurt!?”

She scowled and smacked him hard across his leather-clad shoulder, over which Dean grunted in pain, and griped, “What the dealio, Dean? It’s been like _three days_ since I last heard from you and now you show up out of nowhere all beaten up! How’d you get your ass handed to you so badly as to put you in this kind of pain?”

Dean grinned with bravado, winking at the diminutive redhead. “Leftover vamp emo kids from that Albuquerque nest. Caught me outside the local bar.”

She blinked at him and screeched, “ _There were **more**?_!” She grabbed his chin and moved his head around to check his neck, Cas assumed. “How’d you even get away from them if they got the jump on you?!”

Dean pushed her off and snapped, “I don’t know! It happened so fast! I must’ve been concussed or something, ‘cause there was this bright light and they were ash!”

“A bright light, huh?” Purred a new voice, a petite brunette strolling into the entrance way with a sway of her hips in dark jeans and a shirt the color of a new bruise. “Well, looky here, if it isn’t Castiel,” she murmured, her dark eyes rolling over him hungrily. “How’s it going, Clarence?”

“I don’t know why you insist on calling me that, Megara,” Cas muttered, noting that both Hunters had stopped their bickering to stare at the new pair.

She smirked lasciviously and stopped right in front of him, licking her plum-colored lips with the tip of her tongue. She smelled of old, earthy magics and osha, while her aura was locked away beneath a pile of locks and barriers that only a very competent witch was capable of doing.

“Because you keep calling me that, gorgeous.” She leaned in closer and whispered into his ear, “Here to finally be mine, _chol_?”

Behind her, Dean scowled, a faint trace of anger flickering in his aura, while green jealousy flickered through Charlie’s brilliant bright blue aura.

Cas pushed her away, frowning faintly. “Not in the least. I was merely giving Dean a hand. His car is in no condition to be moved currently.”

“Something happened to the Impala, too!?” Charlie smacked Dean in the chest with the back of her fist, causing him to grunt in pain.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Dean muttered sullenly, rubbing his chest and his eyes on Megara. “So did you have fun at your shindig or whatever?”

Megara turned dark eyes on him, smirking. “It was a lovely party, yes, Dean. Not that you would have appreciated it. There weren’t any caveman games.”

“Hardy har har,” he snarked back, rolling his eyes.

“Megara, must you provoke him?” Cas asked softly.

Those dark eyes, already painted darker by kohl and mascara, seemed to deepen more. “Maybe I’ll stop if you come speak to me in private?”

Behind them, he sensed the annoyance and agitation from the Hunters. He ignored them, rolling his eyes, and nodding.

Megara smiled like a pleased cat and lead him into her office.

Although Cas was used to witches, he wasn’t particularly fond of their magic. It was made to harness nature, and–as a creature of nature–it made him itch down to his core.

She didn’t bother to take a seat, so neither did he. The office was used primarily for customers looking for readings, since Megara was famous for her divination, as he had told Dean.

To play into it, it was painted in blues, purples, and blacks, as if greens, yellows, and browns couldn’t be mystical, with stars, smiling moons, and smirking suns in the cloth that she had draped over her reading table. She didn’t really use a crystal ball, yet she had one on top of her table as well as a few fetishes and a large white candle.

He supposed it played into her persona.

“So what are you up to there with Deanie boy?”

He just stared at her and slowly replied, “He was attacked by moroi vamps and I saved him.”

An elegant eyebrow arched up in surprise. “Well, look at you. Revealing yourself for a handsome face.”

If he had been human, he would’ve blushed at her insinuation. “I hardly revealed myself. He had suffered a concussion, and I killed the vamps. Who’s left to identify me?”

Megara eyed him and then shook her head in disbelief. “Nifty avoidance of the question there, champ.”

Cas pressed his lips together and murmured, “He has a beautiful aura and soul. I was interested in talking to him.”

Laughing, Megara shoved his shoulder with her hand and huffed, “I knew you were interested in that hot piece of man flesh!”

He glared and she blew a kiss at him. “Deities know you aren’t interested in this.”

“I think you have enough people interested and sampling,” he replied wryly.

She shrugged as she passed him. “Spoilsport. Polyamory is great if you can get the right combination.”

“And do you?”

Grinning wickedly, she winked and pushed open the door. “Which _set_?”

He rolled his eyes as he walked past her to find both Hunters still in the entrance way, as he thought. When he and Megara were within distance, Charlie immediately gripped Megara’s arm possessively, and he ignored Dean’s questioning gaze.

“Dean, would you like me to take you where you need to go? It sounded urgent, what with people dying, and I don’t mind accompanying you.”

Surprise flickered over Dean’s face and he shifted uncomfortably from foot-to-foot, only to shift back when he ended up on his hurt leg in the process. “I don’t know. I mean, Charlie…”

“They haven’t finished the divination yet,” Cas said, eyeing Megara knowingly. She shrugged with one (free) arm and replied, “I’ve been busy!”

Charlie colored and giggled. Dean pretended to gag. “I did NOT need to know that,” he grumbled, and more loudly added, “Yeah, okay, Cas. But let me take a look at that truck. It’s an ugly beast.”

Cas felt offended on behalf of his old truck but reckoned a free tune-up that he didn’t even have to make an appointment for was not something to recklessly surrender. “Fine. In return, I’ll help Megara set up. I suspect she wouldn’t be able to do the divination until the full moon regardless.”

Megara, who was whispering into Charlie’s ear and making her giggle and blush harder, looked up long enough to say, “Yeah. I hate set up. It’s in the main cavern, so you can paint the runes and stuff, Clarence.”

“Awesome, gives me time to check out the damage and fix the old beast up.”

Cas sighed at the bright flicker of enjoyment that surged through Dean’s aura at the thought, not looking forward to hours and hours’ worth of tiny rune work.

Megara winked at him and swept off with Charlie in tow.

It was going to be a long day.

Hanging out in Meg’s weird cave garage, Dean surveyed the truck’s workings, and he was rather shocked it was functioning at all, given that everything visible was threadbare, fixed with duct tape, or (somehow) missing. The truck was, in fact, an ancient beast, somehow staying together with what looked like rust and spit in some places.

He took out several pieces to clean them off, fighting years of neglect in some cases, and he swore the machine _growled_ at him.

Then came the regular maintenance that looked to have been skipped for the gods knew how long! The oil was thick and the filter disgusting. There was no windshield fluid and the belts were all about to break. All of them. There were a couple of lines missing that should have handicapped the truck. But the big surprises were that…somehow, there was a cap missing, and the truck must’ve been powered by sheer will, because he could see there were sparkplugs missing and the fuel pump didn’t pump.

Fortunately, Dean liked a challenge and dug into the beast’s innards with glee.

Cas eyed the ritual cavern with extreme distaste. It was huge, made to work with the natural hole at the top for weather and planetary work. Right now, the oculus beamed direct sunlight into the room, lighting it up and making everything look jagged and harsh in contrast. There was a large stone altar with protection runes carved into its sides, perfectly positioned looked directly up into the oculus. There were some torch holders on the walls and a larger sacrificial altar (made of metal and wood) with blood-letting grooves was pressed against the far wall that he was not going to touch. At all.

On the altar, a large box of small votive candles, and all the rest of the paraphernalia to complete a ritual was sitting on top, waiting to be set up.

Worst of all, however, were the black concentric rings of matte obsidian that Megara had had set into the rough stone floor to write on. They were six of them, the smallest a three-foot diameter, the largest with a 12-foot diameter. The glass stone was cold and hard to write on, he knew, having been coerced into helping her before.

Annoyed, he realized Megara had set him up to do _everything_ this time. She had done nothing more than arrange the ritual tools to be available.

Even the scroll with the rune work had been very prominently placed on top of the box of candles and it was no wonder she needed the big cave: it was four rings big with looping, intricate writing in each annulus to build layers of sigils. Groaning, he picked up the box of white chalk and dragged himself to the inner circle first, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

This was going to take a _very_ long time.

* * *

[1] Osha root ( _Ligusticum porteri_ ) is an herb that has a _very_ distinct earthy/disinfectant smell. I find it repellent, which is amusing because it supposedly protects from evil.

[2] In case you want to know, this does exist. Not kidding; [40-lbs of ghost peppers per bottle](http://www.thedailymeal.com/world-s-10-spiciest-hot-sauces-slideshow/slide-9)! 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oculus is a hole at the top of a building, like the Pantheon in Rome. FYI: it really doesn't provide all that much light on cloudy days or when the sun is not directly overhead. It DOES make you wonder how Romans kept dry when it rained because it's huge. Freaking HUGE.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Temptation strikes like forked lightning.

By the time Dean had gotten the truck moderately fixed up (thanks to Meg lending him her cruddy RAV-4), it was already late in the day and edging into night. At least, he reckoned, the truck was not growling anymore but semi-purring.

Semi-purring, he swore, because it was a cantankerous old bitch of a vehicle that refused to run well _despite_ his babying it and cleaning up all its innards.

He wiped his hands on an old cloth and closed the hood with a satisfied bang.

_Good enough._

Dean paused to give his hands a fast wash in the sink and then walked inside via the ‘garage’ door. He was glad to be out of the quickly cooling air while only wearing a (now grease-covered) t-shirt and jeans. He sighed a relieved breath of regaining a bit of feeling to his face, just as he saw Cas also reenter the entrance way.

To his amusement, Cas was covered in chalk dust, his dark hair and blue shirt liberally powdered with it, and only the lenses of his glasses free of the particles. The knees of his jeans were clean, but he was extremely disgruntled if his black glower was any indication.

“So how’d it go? Setting up the room?” Dean asked with a smirk.

Cas glared at him through those coke-bottle glasses and he chuckled, moving closer to slap him heartily on the shoulder. “That bad, huh?”

A large cloud of chalk puffed up at his touch, and they both coughed as the dust immediately aimed for their throats.

“Well, you’re covered in grease,” Cas observed (and smelled, if the scrunched nose was any indication).

Dean looked down at himself as he coughed and half-heartedly slapped at the grease stains on his shirt. “Yeah, hard to change oil, spark plugs, a carburetor, and a bunch of belts on an old lady like that and not get a bit dirty.”

Cas’s gaze narrowed on him. “Did you just call my truck an ‘old lady’?”

Dean grinned at Cas using air quotes around old lady. “I did because that old girl is older than me. Although not older than my Baby, so…”

“How do you have a ba–” Cas paused. “You’re referring to your car again, aren’t you?”

Dean laughed and dragged Cas along with him towards the main activities room. “I am. Good catch.”

He yawned and stretched, his body still achy all over but at least it was with purpose. And without involving shitty teenage vampires. “Meg better let me eat and shower, or I’m pouring holy water on her until she melts.”

“Promises, promises, Deanie,” she said from her seat on the oversized couch. There was another redhead tucked next to her–Anna if he remembered right. Charlie was clutching Meg’s other side, and Dean had to wonder how the fuck Meg got all these women into that poly-whatever BS that Charlie kept trying to convince him was fucking awesome?

Although Dean liked to think of himself progressive when it came to sex, he was really an all-or-nothing kinda guy. One-night stands or a relationship. This in-between nonsense–the network of occasional fuck buddies and clusters of spouses–just led to trouble. More women, more trouble, in his opinion.

“It won’t seem like empty promises when you’re a pile of green witch goo,” he snidely returned, ignoring Charlie’s glare in his direction.

“I would appreciate something to eat myself,” Cas added from behind him.

At that, Meg looked mildly regretful and it might have been his imagination, because it flickered over her face so quickly.

“Clarence, I have a fresh bottle of water for you that you’ll enjoy.” She shifted her dark gaze back to Dean. “I believe there is some pizza in there especially for you, since Charlie insisted on making it.”

“You’re the best, Char!” He winked at her, and, out of the corner of his eye, saw Cas (dustily) bow slightly to the women before following him to the kitchen.

There was, indeed, a handmade large meat pizza with sausage, bacon, hamburger, and ham on it, with extra cheese and piles of onions. His stomach growled as he pulled it out of the oven and just stared at its beauty, dazed.

Meanwhile, behind him, Cas had retrieved what looked to be a fancy deep blue-tinted glass bottle with a fancy jeweled stopper that made the guy grimace. The bottle’s surface collected chalk dust as he held it, the deep blue making it obvious.

“Not your taste?” Dean asked as he grabbed a knife from the butcher’s block and cut himself a large slice of pizza goodness.

“Megara has always had rather questionable tastes when it comes to me,” Cas murmured, pulling the stopper out and sniffing the mouth of the bottle. “But she does mean well.”

“Says you,” Dean muttered around his pizza. It was delicious!

Cas took a sip and looked immensely satisfied, his stiff shoulders relaxing as he sighed in relief. If he had been a bird, Dean thought, his feathers would have puffed up and settled. But he had no idea where that weird thought had even come from.

Cas took another couple of sips–while Dean snarfed down his pizza–recorked the bottle and said, “I’m going to take a shower now, if you’ll excuse me.”

Blinking, Dean watched the guy put the bottle in the fridge and just walk out. He shrugged a bit and worked on finishing his pizza.

Weird guy.

Cas was sitting in the bedroom that Megara had assigned him, dressed in some plaid sleep pants and a well-worn t-shirt that Megara had loaned him. He was not really exhausted, per se, but more tired than he recalled being in ages. He rationalized that it had been–at first–healing Dean that had started the mild feeling of exhaustion (several broken ribs, a lung with multiple punctures, a ruptured spleen, and a compound-fracture leg break was more than he usually had to deal). He had not healed anyone in decades, much less with extensive and potentially life-threatening wounds.

Yet it was the constant interaction with a Hunter and finally having to set up the entire ritual for the lazy witch that had pushed him over the edge to tired, sleepy even. It was nice that Megara’s decorating was made to be as comfortable as possible, with a large, soft-looking bed with deep-red duvet down comforters and large fluffy pillows, a small, slim lamp hung behind a set of curtains to mimic a window, a moderate-sized heavy-wood bookcase, a writing desk and chair, and a large wardrobe with a mirror set into the inside of the door. He was enjoying the plush, overstuffed chair that was placed catty-corner to the door and tucked near the bed.

He had randomly plucked a book from the bookshelf, and it looked like he had chosen an old edition of Thomas More’s _Utopia_. It was so old it was in Latin with a real leather binding. He hadn’t even known Megara liked to read for fun. The thought was foreign to his knowledge of her, although he knew she was exceedingly clever and an excellent witch.

It was while he was skimming through the book (he had already read it, but it _was_ entertaining) that Dean stumbled into the room half naked, only a towel wrapped around his waist and a towel being scrubbed over his head.

Cas froze as the Hunter hadn’t seen him and had turned to dig into the closet, his towel sudden at thigh height and revealing most of his long, slightly bowed legs. The Hunter’s back was, as Cas knew, covered in tattoos, but without the bandage and wounds obscuring his view, they were huge and gorgeous, especially as they shifted as Dean moved, and partially hidden by the moving towel as he scrubbed his head with one hand.

He was still frozen when Dean turned around, dropped the towel from around his waist, and tried to pull on his boxers one-handed. Cas felt himself color, his entire face and head just heated up with embarrassment. If his brain was shamed for staring at the unwitting man, Cas’s body was mightily impressed with everything he was seeing, from the soft cock nestled in brown curls to the tattooed chest, its hard muscles shifting under imperfect skin as the man tried to change, his abdomen ridged and protruding hipbones that veered down to that simply lovely cock.

Unable to take the situation much longer (because from under that skin glowed the man’s beautiful soul, all warm, fed, and content), Cas tried to clear his throat but only succeeded in a half-squawk that stopped Dean in the process of putting his foot into the other leg of his boxers.

Green eyes slowly lifted to meet his, the towel on his head still obscuring his full view, and stared back at Cas.

It was a unique moment that was broken by Dean slowly pulling up his drawers and, swallowing uncomfortably, he gruffed out, “So, uh… you… see… everything?”

Cas could feel that his face was still very hot as he nodded slowly.

Licking his lips, Dean asked half-jokingly, “Ha, ah… so, see anything you liked?”

This was followed by a self-conscious wink, which honestly all seemed odd, as Dean didn’t seem to be the sort who was ashamed of his body.

Averting his eyes (now!), Cas pronounced, “I believe Megara has played a prank and put us in the same room. I apologize.”

“Ya _think_ it’s a joke?” Dean snapped, irritation obvious. “That woman is made of evil.”

Cas turned back partly to ask, “Is this…evil?” He was curious (and a bit hurt) because he had seen Dean’s attraction to him, so he didn’t think the man was homophobic.

If anything, Dean blushed harder, his aura flickering with panic. “No! No, no, no! I just… uh… can I put some clothes on?”

That startled Cas and he smiled at the discomfiture in Dean’s voice and aura.

“Of course, Dean.”

Dean colored harder and Cas tilted his head in confusion as the man flustered, “Can you turn around? I’d prefer not to have an audience!”

Cas felt his previously receding embarrassment surge back up and heat his face hotter than before. “I–of course. I do apologize.” He turned to face the wall but failed to reckon on the window that gave him a complete reflection of the Hunter and his well-defined muscled body.

Swallowing hard, he turned his gaze to his hands where they were gripping the book, his fingers white, and tried to figure out why this man, this Hunter, was affecting him quite so much?

“Okay, you can look, Cas.”

The residual heat in his face as he looked towards the Hunter was awkward. This had never happened to him before, and he didn’t understand why it was happening now?

Dean was dressed in what looked like sleep pants and a t-shirt, his hair yet sticking up all over the place. His face, however, was still red and he swept a hand through his hair as he tried to collect himself. “I, uh, I’m not usually quite so shy, but I’m usually aware of my audience, so… sorry?”

“Sorry?” Cas tilted his head again in confusion. “For what? I was the one who was caught staring.”

Dean huffed in aggravation and hefted his duffle bag. “I mean, I was being ruder than I shoulda been, y’know? I, uh, didn’t even notice you there, and just accepted that this was my room when Meg told me.” His lips thinned. “Meg,” he growled lowly, eyes narrowed.

Cas shook his head. “Dean, I suspect that she put us in the same room out of fun at our discomfort.” He crookedly smiled and added, “Wouldn’t it be better to just confound her?”

Ignoring Dean’s baffled expression, Cas set aside the book he was still gripping and padded over to the king-sized bed. He slipped under the soft covers and patted the free side. “Plenty of room between us.”

Dean scowled and then laughed lowly. “Gotta hand it to you, Cas, didn’t think you had it in you to be mischievous.”

Cas smiled wider. “See, neither will Megara. We all win.”

Without argument, Dean dropped his duffle and slipped into the other side and for the first time in decades, Cas fell asleep to the deep breaths of someone sleeping next to him.

It was surprisingly nice. 

When Dean awoke, he was pleasantly cozy and something smelled of laundry dried out in the sun and some sort of flowers, like fabric softener. He realized he was wrapped around someone and he tugged them closer to get a deeper hit of that scent, it was so pleasant and warm.

The body grumbled and snuggled in, and Dean became slowly aware that something was off.

He didn’t feel like he had had sex. He didn’t remember any sweet thing in his bed…then he felt something hard rub against his thigh and he remembered.

His eyes flew open as his memory came back and he turned to find Cas cuddled up to him, his face in Dean’s neck, his morning wood rubbing against Dean’s thigh. He swallowed hard because his own dick was not shocked by the morning events and, in fact, seemed quite into it.

But he wasn’t even sure Cas was into it. It would be casual sex for him, and Cas didn’t seem the sort to love them and leave them. More like the type to love them and never let them go, really.

Uncomfortable, Dean took another look at the sleeping Cas, his hair even more tousled, his face almost completely different without the wall of plastic and glass between him and the world. In fact, Dean thought, looking closer, his initial impression that Cas was hot was wholly verified and probably not as accurate as he thought. Cas was _super_ hot. His lashes were long fans against his olive cheeks, a dark shadow of stubble along his jawline showed off the cleft in his chin and set off his plump pink lips.

Lips, Dean realized, that were very close to his (now that he was looking) and part of what woke him were the soft puffs of breath that had been hitting his throat until he had moved to look at the man. Even as he watched, a pink tongue darted out to lick those puffy lips and Dean swallowed the groan that threatened to get away from him. He wanted to rut back against Cas and see where this might go… but something held him back and he slowly, carefully, untangled himself from Cas and slipped out of bed to get to the bathroom and take care of the raging hard on in his pants.

He smiled as Cas scowled and grumbled, his grabby hands reaching out for Dean. He pushed his pillow at Cas and chuckled lowly as Cas snagged it and hugged it to himself, still grumbling until he pushed his nose into it.

It was adorable.

He absently scratched his belly as he walked down the corridor to the bathroom, smiling fondly, and was completely not ready for the caustic voice that greeted him.

“Well, well, good morning, Winchester. I see you’re rather raring to get going.”

She was down the end of the hall that led into the main room, leaning against the doorway with what smelled like coffee and a huge Cheshire cat grin on her face.

He frowned at her, wondering what the fuck she was referring to, when her dark eyes very pointedly looked at his crotch and…

Dean fought the urge to cover himself up. That’s what that awful _thing_ wanted. “Not your business,” he managed to grit out through his mortification.

She sipped her coffee, the mug a huge white bowl that looked almost as big as her face, and said, “You’re under my roof, Deanie. That makes it my business.”

Dean ignored the heat in his face, grateful, at least, he was wearing a shirt. “My _dick_ isn’t yours to ponder on, witch.”

Meg grinned suggestively over the lip of her mug. “Sure, if you say so.”

He stumbled into the bathroom as she sauntered past, and she purred, “Take your time,” as he closed the door.

He was relieving himself (because Meg could soften a steel rod in his opinion) when it occurred to him that Meg had been walking towards the room he shared with Cas. Alarmed, he shook off, tucked himself away and just hauled ass to the room.

Dean found Meg curled on the bed (in _his_ spot!) whispering in Cas’s ear while he grumbled back. She chuckled and looked up to find Dean in the doorway, probably looking on edge. That evil grin curved her lips as she leaned over and kissed Cas on the forehead, whispered something in his ear, and slipped off the mattress.

She grabbed her mug/bowl off the bedside table and sauntered past him with a saucy wink.

 _What the actual fuck?_  

They finally departed Megara’s around nine, which was fine for him as the sun was strong in the sky by nine, but something seemed to have irritated Dean somehow. He kept scowling at him and glaring at Megara, and Cas had no idea why.

Unwilling to deal with something that–after a review of his morning–had nothing to do with him, Cas decided to ignore Dean’s pissiness and get on to business. They had a long way to go.

He just gratefully took the stores of fresh water Megara had offered and the dried foods. His camper had things to eat as well, but he was still relieved when she handed him two more enchanted blue bottles of fresh dew. The bottles were meant to hold them in stasis, to keep them tasting fresh. It wasn’t like he didn’t receive nutrients from human food, but more that he didn’t receive all the nutrition he required.

Megara was really quite kind-hearted.

Charlie and Dean, however, had gone off to the side to essentially scream at each other, ending with Charlie beating on Dean quite furiously and Dean acquiescing to whatever she was demanding. With a grimace, he took the item and put it in his pocket. Satisfied, Charlie hugged him and pushed him towards the truck.

“Is Charlie not accompanying us after all?”

Dean thinned his lips and glared at the happy redhead. “No, she told me to put on my big boy pants because Meg needs her to run calculations for her rituals. Something about algorithms with the divination to make it more accurate aaaand I stopped listening after that.”

“I see.” He hesitated and then patted the jean-clad thigh. “I know I’ll be an unfulfilling partner, but I’ll do my best.”

Dean flushed a bit, the pink in his cheeks making his freckles stand out, but mostly bringing a lovely flicker of rose into his aura that made Cas smile.

“CDC should have cleared most of it, so we should go investigate the prison first.”

“The one in Nevada?”

Dean grinned and slapped the truck’s dash. “The very one! Now let’s take this old girl out and see how she runs!”

Cas smiled again and nodded, setting on taking them down the trail, while Dean picked through a box of cassette tapes he had salvaged from his car (his _Baby_ ) to listen to.

“Can’t have a road trip without awesome tunes, Cas,” he’d said as he had plopped his duffle bag and the box of tapes into the passenger seat’s footwell.

As something with powerful guitars and drums thrummed through the aged stereo system, Cas thought that it might be true.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Charlie watched the two men take off in the broken-down truck with great concern that didn’t lessen as Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” blared out the window. “Will they be okay,” she asked, worrying her lip and concern in every syllable.

“They’ll be better than okay,” Meg smiled wickedly, her brown eyes flicking black for a moment. “They’ll find their destinies.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cloudberries. Wings. Sunlight. Good morning!

_We come from the land / Of the ice and snow / From the midnight sun / Where the hot springs blow_

The drive was ridiculously peaceful once they got off the mountain, with minimal grumbling from the truck and Dean feeling less like the vehicle was going to shake apart in its grumpy fury. They only stopped long enough to gas up, and, although the truck was still not happy with the hilly and curved roads they were driving, at least it no longer sounded like it was about to just fucking die in the middle of cruising along.

This last prison that had been wiped out by whatever virus was running amok was located outside a small town called Mesa Rojo in Arizona. From Meg’s, it wasn’t a horrible ride, only about four hours.

But Dean had slept more than his usual the last few days and was feeling antsy, even if his wounds hadn't completely healed up.

They stopped for gas in a couple of wide spots in the road that were somehow smaller than Meg’s one-horse town. He hadn’t thought that was possible, but it _was_ New Mexico and Arizona. To boot, it didn’t help that Cas was a shitty conversationalist, who had no favorite films, TV shows, or even music.

“You were at that bar every weekend,” Dean shouted after a particularly frustrating twenty-minutes of “Do You Know This Group?”

“I didn’t pay attention to the music any more than I would listen to the people gossip,” Cas replied primly. “I was there…”

At his pause, Dean peered over and shook his head. “Oh, no you don’t! Spill it, Cas!”

Tucking in his lips and biting on the bottom one, blue eyes flashed through thick lenses towards Dean with something that looked like embarrassment.

“It can’t be that bad,” Dean persisted.

“I was lonely,” Cas said slowly, softly. “I’ve been alone for a long time, and they were entertaining.”

“No one hit on you? You didn’t, I dunno, take anyone home for some release?”

Cas rolled his eyes and muttered, “Not everyone wants sexual release without the intimacy, Dean. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

Dean huffed. “Alright, sorry. Didn’t mean to offend or nothing. Just… really? How long has it been Cas?”

“For what?”

“Y’know?”

Cas scowled at the empty road. “Know what?”

Rubbing his fingers against his forehead, Dean said, “Never mind. I mean, if you’re a virgin or whatever…”

“I never said that. I just don’t understand the question.”

“When did you last have sex?!” Dean felt himself go red asking so bluntly, not even mildly surprised that Cas’s lips puckered into an “Oh…”

“It’s…been awhile,” he replied uncomfortably. “Perhaps… a decade or so?”

“Holy shit! A decade!”

Cas shrugged. “It’s not of import usually.”

Dean staggered back into his seat, eyes unseeing at the road. “A fucking decade without fucking,” he muttered to himself, completely aghast.

“Can I ask you something that has nothing to do with my sexual antics or lack therein?”

“I dunno. Your lack of sex life is pretty entertaining, if kinda terrifying.”

Cas ignored him and asked, “What can you tell me about this thing you’re hunting, aside from it killing whole populations?”

_Ah, that._

“Well, the prison records and prisoner notebooks that we’ve found have inmates talking about things that look like gnomes roaming about at the corners of their eyes.”

“Gnomes?”

Dean peeked over to make sure Cas wasn’t being an ass. The man’s face was expressionless, so Dean continued. “Yeah, like those tiny guys some folks like to build tiny altars in their yards for? Y’know, with the guardian gnomes to protect their gardens and lawns?”

“I am familiar with gnomes, Dean,” Cas said gravely.

“Not everyone is, _Cas_ ,” Dean snarked back. He rolled his eyes and added, “Anyway, an uptick in gnome sightings has to mean _something_ , but I’ve never heard of aggressive gnomes, much less gnomes who were willing to run around a human habitation like that, at least not one with so much iron.”

“You’re right, that is odd,” Cas murmured, a furrow in his brow. “I also don’t know how many creatures that would command gnomes. Did they say what color the hats were?”

Dean stared at him. “No? I think most of them said red?”

Cas nodded.

“Does that mean anything to you?”

“No. But I thought it might shake my memory.”

Dean shook his head and slouched in his seat more. “Ass.”

“Anything else?”

Scowling, Dean opened his new burner phone (thank you Walmart) to find the email that Charlie had sent him. “Yeah, Charlie found mentions of ‘tiny furry monsters with sloping bald heads and black eyes.’”

“Trolls?” Cas sounded very surprised this time. “Those are not really native to this country. Really? _Trolls?_ ”

“I couldn’t lie about this if I wanted to.” He closed out his email and sighed. “I don’t know what’s going on because as far as I’ve found in my research, gnomes and trolls don’t usually mean illness and death.”

“That’s true, which is what makes it odd, especially if they are the small versions. The larger trolls have mostly been eradicated, however.”

“There used to be larger trolls?”

Cas nodded. “The size of an elephant. Smelled awful too.”

Shuddering, Dean muttered, “Thank god they’re gone.”

“Mostly gone, Dean,” Cas corrected as he pulled into a truck stop, “Mostly.”

 

As expected, they were permitted to enter the Mesa Rojo correctional facilities as long as they wore protective gear. The area had been cleared by the CDC, but because they couldn’t pick out a single source for what they now believed was a new virus, walking into the empty building without protective gear was prohibited.

The entire facility had been reviewed and cataloged. The first death they could account for was Jacob Brown, but the only suspicious thing about his death was a tiny snake bite. Otherwise, they had to figure the virus had been airborne for so many people to have died so quickly when exposed.

“And all the guards died?” Dean asked, watching Cas stare at the walls of Jacob Brown’s cell, since all the mattresses and personal items had been burned out of caution. Cas looked very uncomfortable in the yellow Outbreak outfit, shifting in it from side-to-side.

“Even the ones outside on the perimeter watch,” the director, Max Velasquez, stated tiredly, “they were the last to catch whatever it was. They managed to call out for help, but the CDC got wind of it somehow and ordered a lockdown of the area before anyone else could approach.” He looked exhausted through the visor and rather green around the edges, which was just unflattering with bloodshot eyes. “We… we found them just desiccating in the sun. It was so…”

Dean tried to unobtrusively step away in case the man did indeed barf, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned those wet, weary red eyes on Dean and asked, “Do you think this was a creature?”

Shrugging, Dean looked around the cell, irritated with how his peripheral vision was obscured by the helmet and he couldn’t reach for his knives. “We think so, but we aren’t sure. When you get the prison notes and any notebooks or journals from the inmates cleared, can you look for comments about gnomes or even trolls?”

“Trolls?” The director went impossibly paler and swayed on his feet, and Dean grabbed him by the arms and forced him to take a seat on a nearby cooler.

“Well, they might be mentioned as tiny, fur-covered guys with black eyes and a bald head,” Dean added as he backed away.

“Trolls,” the guy muttered forlornly, and Dean recognized the guy was about to fall off his rocker.

He called over one of the cops to take the poor man home and went back to Cas.

He found Cas peering at one of the walls in the prison, the one where they speculated the first guy had died. Dean leaned over to look at it himself, but then reeled back as he realized Cas wasn’t wearing the helmet.

“What the actual fuck, Cas! You tryin’ to die?!”

Cas glanced over at him and promptly went back to eyeing the wall. “The contagion has already passed, Dean. It’s fine. I promise.”

Dean glared and poked him hard with his finger. “You and me, buddy. We are so having a-comin' to Jesus meeting about what the fuck you are, because you are _not_ human.”

Ignoring him, Cas pointed to what looked like a thin wavy black stain against the wall, possibly a burn. “What does this look like to you?”

Dean moved closer and scratched at it with his gloved finger. It was grooved into the cement blocks, as if something particularly acidic had slid down from the window, burning its way along. “What is it?”

Cas fingered the spot with his gloved hand and sniffed the residue. To Dean’s horror, he then stuck the finger in his mouth and sucked on it.

_“What the actual fuck, Cas?!”_

Cas frowned thoughtfully, tilting his head and smacking his lips a bit. “That is not right,” he murmured, “It tastes like _rubus chamaemorus_.”

“Like rue-bus chama-what?”

“ _Rubus chamaemorus_ ,” Cas repeated, scooting closer to the wall.

“Does it have a name in English?” Dean asked, irritated.

“Oh, yes, several actually. I believe it’s commonly called a ‘cloudberry.’” He knelt on the floor and followed the burnt path to the edge of the cell, where it edged closer to the cement wall and then curled back around and out the window again. “Also ‘knotberry,’ ‘aqpik,’ and ‘averin’,” he added absently.

“What is a cloudberry? Is it poisonous?” Dean was intrigued by Cas’s investigation of the burns, and it was weird, but he wasn’t sure it had anything to do with the virus.

Then again, he didn’t have proof it _didn’t_ have anything to do with it.

“Cloudberries are not native to the desert or this far southwest. They are native to Scandinavia and grow on mountains and moors. It’s odd to find this here.”

“Ah huh.” Dean watched Cas finally stand up and stare at the wall pensively again. “So, you find anything out there, Sherlock? Aside from the fact it tastes like Fruity Pebbles?”

That made Cas look at him, adorably confused. “My name is not Sherlock. You know that.”

Rolling his eyes, Dean groused, “Yes, Cas. It was… y’know what? Never mind. Just tell me what you’ve got? What you’ve discovered?”

Cas rolled his shoulders as if he were uncomfortable, even scratching his nose as he considered what to say. “I’m not wholly sure. These berries, as I said, have a very distinctive flavor. I don’t know enough about Scandinavia really to make any judgments, but perhaps this creature is from there.”

“With a grudge against Americans?”

Shrugging, Cas pushed past him and out into the walkway. “Possibly. Americans are not precisely well liked in most of the world.”

Dean wasn’t touching that with a 10-meter cattle prod, so he followed Cas out as they walked the building until Cas said, “That’s it. There’s nothing potent left. Whatever the contagion was, it was extremely fast and virulent.”

He sniffed the air again and shivered. “I can’t isolate it. There are too many creatures capable of this level of death and destruction. Our best clue to follow is the cloudberries.”

Dean nodded, looking forward to removing his giant glowing condom suit. “Cloudberries it is.” 

They decided to stay the night at a small Motel 6 off the highway, Dean going in to get the keys.

Cas should have asked if he wanted to share the camper, as there was ample room, but he suspected Dean would not have been appreciative of the offer. So he held his tongue as Dean ambled in and spoke to the sleepy night clerk and mentally steadied himself to refuse the extra bed. He was uncertain whether this would anger the Hunter or not.

The man was unpredictable.

Dean came out and rattled the keys at Cas through the window, showing him the room number. It was on the first floor and he followed Dean in the truck to Room 118.

As Dean opened the motel door, Cas parked and turned off the motor. As expected, Dean opened the passenger door and snagged his duffle bag. “You comin’ in or what, Cas?”

Swallowing hard, Cas replied, “I don’t think so, actually. I think I’ll stay in the camper and perhaps use the facilities in the morning, if that’s acceptable?”

Dean must’ve caught on to Cas’s nervousness because he simply accepted it. “Yeah, ok. I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

Cas nodded as Dean shut the door and walked towards the room, waving at him slightly as Dean paused and turned to look at him one more time before shutting the door. Cas deflated. “Thank the essence,” he muttered.

Tonight was the full moon and he was feeling itchy. The full moon always made him feel itchy, probably because of the strength of the sun’s reflection. It wasn’t like being in the sun, but it didn’t make him feel empty and alone like new moons.

He got out of the cab and stretched, easing the tensions in his back, particularly his shoulders. He wasn’t used to driving that protracted length of time anymore. He had lived in Meg’s small town for far too long, much longer than he had anywhere else in decades.

Cas let the moonlight fall over him and fill him, the light salving his exhaustion a bit. He would think about what he was doing in the morning. He had managed to evade Dean’s questions about what he was, and–now that they were heading back home–perhaps he wouldn’t ever have to answer it?

He would simply need to disappear again, and that was one thing he was _very_ good at.

 

Dean woke up much earlier than usual and much, much earlier than he liked, but he had to take a leak so here he was, at 630am, awake and shuffling around. He knew the day was dawning, at least, with the curtains starting to glow around the edges. Annoyed with the thought of daylight, he shuffled over to the window and threw back the curtain.

He wasn’t ready to find Cas standing outside with his arms raised towards the sun and his back to Dean. The lean man’s back was muscled and had what looked like a tattoo on it. A tattoo of wings, but not in black ink, but in what looked like watercolors of dark blues, yellows, reds, and oranges that made them appear as if made of flames.  Even as he observed the beautiful lines of those wings that dipped into Cas’s pants, bracketing the line of his lower spine, the wings began to flare up off Cas’s skin, catching the sunlight as they spread over his shoulders and head like translucent golden sails of fire lit bright blue then orange towards his spine and bright translucent blue-white along the edges.

They seemed to absorb and release light, all while looking as if they allowed the light to pass through them. They were glorious and gorgeous and Dean didn’t know what to think as he watched his friend shake them out (releasing what looked like sparks from a campfire) and slide them back down onto his back.

Dean closed the drapes and stared blankly at the putrid beige material.

“Is he a phoenix?” That seemed impossible. Phoenixes had not been heard of in thousands of years, not since the fall of the Roman Empire, and, even then, they had been scarce. The legend of their having the key to immortality always brought more death and destruction than anything else as leaders and rich men vied to capture and keep them. The Men of Letters, scholars of the supernatural, taught that they were extinct or so deep in hiding that there was no use searching for them.

“He can’t be a phoenix,” Dean rationalized, shaking his head to rid himself of the idea. “There are no more phoenixes.”

When he opened the curtain again (to make sure), it was just Cas standing outside in the sunlight, sipping on one of the blue bottles he had brought with him.

Snapping the curtains closed yet again, Dean sharply whispered in bewilderment, “What the actual fuck?” 

Cas had awoken early to the feel of warm sunlight tinging the air. It smelled more compelling than usual, probably because of the full moon’s weight, and he crawled out of the camper to enjoy it. He even let his wings out for a moment, just to let the fresh sunlight reach each feather for a moment, before tucking them back and sighing with contentment.

He even broke out some of the dew Megara had bottled for him. It was a pleasant way to start the day, and it had been a long time since he’d done something like that. His cabin was remote, and his wings invisible to the naked eye, but drones were a menace as they could be picked up on electronic recordings. Here, with the flat land, the lack of human sounds, and the bright scent of sunlight, he hoped his seconds of rashness were not going to cost him.

The dew felt good on his throat and he wondered what he was going to do about Dean Winchester? He was, he realized, rather attracted to the man, even if he was occasionally infuriating. There was something in his green eyes that called to him, possibly a complimentary flame? He wasn’t sure, but he wanted to find out. Cas was tired of being alone, something that came with centuries of hiding. He hadn’t seen his small flock in eons. He didn’t even know if they were alive.

The motel room door opened and he turned to see Dean standing in the doorway. “Okay there, George Hamilton! Woulda thought you’d gotten enough sun for the year driving without any tint on that old thing.”

“I could never get enough sun, Dean,” he answered, topping the bottle and putting it into the camper. “Can I help you with something?”

Dean grinned. “I’m gonna shower. Since you’re up, you mind getting me some breakfast? Coffee, black, two sugars.”

Cas sighed and nodded. “Sure, I’ll be back in a minute. There’s a McDonald’s a ways up.”

“Awesome! See you in a bit!”

A “bit” ended up about 20 minutes, and he certainly hoped Dean had showered and was ready because the day was looking to be unseasonably hot for November.

Cas knocked on the door before walking in and found Dean on the phone. “You sure about that, Charlie? She did? Really?” Cas smiled at the doubtful tone of Dean’s voice. He must be referring to Megara.

“Alright, if you say so. I’ll ask Cas if it’s cool. Yeah, I will. Okay, later!”

He hung up and, as Cas handed him the bag of food and put the coffee on the table, asked, “Was that Charlie?”

Dean ripped open the bag and dug out the hash brown, devouring it in three bites. “Ah, gods, so much better,” he said through the masticated potato.

Obviously something was terminally wrong with himself, Cas thought, because that was rather adorable.

“Yeah,” Dean said, sipping on the coffee before getting at his Egg McMuffin, “She said they did the divination and that Meg said it was in the North. Charlie added that they calculated it to a place called Poo-joe-la.”

“You mean ‘Pohjola,’” Cas corrected, thinking hard. _Pohjola_  was Finnish…

“Yeah that. It seems like it’s in the Four Corners area, so I guess it’s just as well we stopped for the night.”

“Lucky indeed,” he murmured, thinking about more possibilities. Megara was seldom wrong with her divinations, and with Charlie’s help, it was unlikely that Pohjola wasn’t where they needed to be. Add the cloudberry-flavored acid, and…

Cas stopped his thoughts because Dean was still talking. “…and the place apparently has like only a hundred or so people, so it shouldn’t take too long to figure out who’s doing what. Probably.”

“One does see so much evil in a village,” Cas whispered as he shook his head at Dean’s assessment.

“What?”

“Never mind, can I just take a shower now? I’m feeling every bit of dirt from yesterday.”

Dean cocked an eyebrow. “Well, sure. I just wanted to tell you what the Wonder Twins had to say.”

Cas shook his head at the description. “I don’t know what that means,” he stated as he walked into the bathroom, “but I suppose that doesn’t matter.”

He closed the door to Dean muttering, “Spoilsport.” 

For the whole drive back up towards Four Corners, Dean had an urge to ask Cas if he were indeed a legendary phoenix.

The problem was… how did he do it without sounding like a greedy, bird-napping, immortality-seeking douchebag?

He’d been thinking about it over the last hundred miles or so, trying to figure out how to do it without Cas… flying the coop.

Dean snorted over his joke and Cas gave him a questioning side look. He waved it away. “Nothing, Cas. Just a joke. In my head. About me.”

He tacked that last on before Cas asked him to tell the joke and then what?

The silence that had been between them, eaten by the music that was just a bit too loud to talk in, must’ve broken at his comment, because Cas reached over to the ancient tape player and turned the music down. “I wanted to ask your thoughts on what you think this creature is?”

Dean scowled and pressed his lips together tightly. “Well, it must be Scandinavian, like you suggested. I asked Charlie to plug in our variables, so gnomes, trolls, cloudberries, and a town called ‘Pohjola’ seem to point at something.” He paused to reach into his duffle and fish out his notebook, flipping to the marked page. “Charlie said the name means ‘the most extreme north’ or ‘Northwest region of darkness.’” He flipped through the notebook more. “She said the Finns have mythology about it. There’s an epic poem called that talks about it.”

He snapped it shut and rubbed his hand against his brow. “Man, I don’t know anything about Finland. This is gonna suck.”

“The ‘[Kalevala’ ](https://youtu.be/Oh8kGYfn9Uw)is their epic poem,” Cas said softly, “It’s quite lovely in Finnish. Pohjola in Finland was a place where heroes went to find wives. In the story, a great smith goes to seek the hand of an evil witch’s daughter, and, as a bride price, he creates a mill that churns out food in abundance like a Horn of Plenty. But there’s a war over the mill and it’s broken in the process, ending the abundance of food and breaking the World Tree.”

“Sounds neat,” Dean said flatly, unimpressed. “Is that helpful to this case?”

“Maybe.” They sat quietly for a moment, uncomfortably, and Cas added, “I think this might be… a deity of some sort? I mean, I’m not sure who else could command gnomes and trolls, and have the power to destroy small towns and prisons.”

“Like… a god or something?” That didn’t sound good. Dean swallowed hard and tried not to worry about it. “Do you have any ideas who?”

Cas shook his head, his knuckles whitening on the steering wheel. “No, but with the information you have, you can give it to Charlie to research, right?”

Dean nodded and started writing out an email on his burner phone to send later. He’d have to wait until they got to a hotspot to send it, but at least he could be prepared.

 

The air as they drove further up New Mexico was thinner than Cas was used to anymore. The sun was harsh without as much atmosphere to beam through, and, though it didn’t bother him, it seemed to exhaust Dean.

They had stopped several times on the way to Pohjola because the poor man dehydrated quickly and his skin seemed to sunburn much faster than most.

Cas offered to let him stay in the camper as he continued to drive, but Dean’s lip curled in disgust that he couldn’t control and so Cas left it alone. He didn’t understand why Dean was so obstinate about the camper. It was Cas’s favorite nest, so cozy and comfortable for his needs.

Regardless, they continued on, stopping at an occasional truck stop or gas station. The truck stops usually had a diner attached, where Dean always tried the pie, and then they were off again, following the sun.

They finally stopped for the night, no motel in sight, and Cas said, “I think it would be wise to use the camper to get a good night’s rest.”

Dean snorted and refused. “I’ll just sleep up here, pal. I’ll just leave the windows open.”

Cas tilted his head as he tried to suss out why Dean would put himself in danger like that. “That sounds unwise and dangerous. I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

Dean scowled and jerked his thumb aiming backward. “Dude, you’ll be like right there! That’s not alone!”

Shaking his head, Cas flatly said, “Dean, you will come with me to the back. You’ll be surprised at how comfortable it is!”

Thumping his head back against the seat as he rolled his eyes, Dean snapped, “How comfortable could it possibly be? It’s like a drafty cube on the back of a truck! Can you even fit two men in there?”

“Dean, stop being stubborn this instant and join me in the back!” Cas felt his inner flame flare at the stubborn reddish-brown settling in Dean’s aura. “I will forcibly pick you up and shove you in there,” he finally threatened, glaring through his glasses.

Narrowing his gaze, Dean hissed, “You wouldn’t dare.”

Look daggers right back, Cas snarled, “Try me!”

Dean pushed his way out of the truck’s cab and slammed the door shut behind him. “You know I’m a Hunter, right? I could totally kick your ass!”

“I know you could try,” Cas snapped.

Dean glowered at him for a moment, until he growled, “Fine!”

To Cas’s surprise, he put his hands out as if to play Rock, Paper, Scissors. “Best two out of three,” Dean stated.

Checking Dean’s face for dishonesty and finding none, Cas also took the position.

They struck their fists into their open palms once, twice… Dean chose scissors, Cas paper. Dean whooped victory!

“Two more, Dean,” Cas rumbled angrily.

Dean grinned cheekily at him and they did it again… once, twice… again, Dean chose scissors, but this time, Cas chose rock. Dean glared laser beams of hate at Cas’s fist as Cas smirked at him.

“Best out of three,” Dean reminded him tightly.

The tension was high as they did it again… once, twice… this time Dean chose paper, and _Cas_ chose scissors. Dean yelped his disappointment, swearing at the ground and at himself while Cas felt exhilarated and happy. It was a rare feeling for him, and he wondered what it was about the small game that had made him feel that way?

Or, he thought, watching Dean stomp back to the truck to put the windows up, it was the man who had challenged him?

His duffle on his shoulder, Dean shifted uneasily and muttered, “Yeah, okay, let’s get this over with. Show me this fancy camper of yours.”

And Cas smiled. 

The inside of the camper was not what Dean was expecting, and he should’ve have known from how eager Cas was to show him.

It was easily twice as big as it looked from the outside, with a decent kitchen and a small library. The back revealed a queen-sized bed with pillows and blankets piled on top. It was rather hot inside, but Cas assured him that it wouldn’t stay that way.

“It’ll be comfortable,” he said, pushing Dean to climb inside.

He did climb in, confused by how soft the carpeting was and how he wasn’t hitting his head on the ceiling. “What the fuck is this, the TARDIS?”

Cas blinked at him and Dean just grumbled and moved further in, settling his duffle on the bed with a thump. Again, he swore he heard the truck _growl_ at him, and he wondered what magic was at play here?

Opening the small refrigerator, Cas handed Dean a cold beer and a packaged sandwich. “Charlie said to make sure I had those for you.”

Dean checked the label (ham and cheese!) and grunted with satisfaction as he gingerly took a seat on the bed. “So, what are you?” He asked, popping open the beer and taking a satisfying gulp.

“I don’t know what you mean.” Dean watched Cas’s face for a clue, but the man was a stone wall, his eyes hidden behind his thick lenses and his body language loose and languid, as if he weren’t being interrogated or on the defensive.

Dean gestured at the camper and at Cas as a whole with his free hand and yelled, “Oh, _c’mon, man!_ This! This isn’t ‘human’ magic! What the fuck is it?”

Cas reached back into the refrigerator and brought out the blue bottle. He popped off the top and sipped it, looking refreshed.

“What do you think I am?” He tipped up the bottle and Dean was distracted by the way the man’s Adam apple bobbed as he swallowed. He popped it off his lips and offered it to Dean.

“It’s harmless,” he promised.

Dean took the bottle and the glass was much heavier and cooler than he thought it would have been, like it had not warmed in Cas’s grasp. The pebbled exterior of the bottle allowed him to grip it firmly, reminding him of beach glass, it felt so worn and smooth. He sniffed and it smelled like water, so he took a small sip.

It was definitely cool and refreshing, tasting vaguely of grass or flowers.

Smacking his lips, handed it back, trying to identify the flavor. “What is that?”

Cas smiled and took another sip before plugging the top and putting the bottle back in the refrigerator. “What did it taste like?”

“I dunno? Maybe tea?”

Chuckling, Cas shook his head. “It’s dew. Megara has it collected into these special bottles for me so it stays fresh as the day it was collected. Otherwise, I couldn’t drink it.”

“Dew?” No wonder the taste of grass was in it. “Why are you drinking dew?”

Huffing slightly, Cas settled onto the edge of the bed, a bit too close for Dean’s comfort, but mostly because he could still feel the heat radiating off the man’s (creature’s?) body. “Because that’s my usual diet, but I don’t get as much of it living in the desert. So I do her favors, and she gets me dew from grassy places. In-between, I eat regular food.”

He leaned in closer to Dean, his magnified eyes intently peering into Dean’s. “That’s a clue, Dean. What am I?”

Swallowing hard, Dean shifted back to get some breathing room. Cas removed his coke bottle glasses, and glittering luminescent blue eyes grew brighter and warmer as he shifted in until he was a breath away.

“I saw your wings,” he stuttered, too shocked to shift backward.

“Did you? And what did you think?” There was no anger or whatever other emotion Dean was hoping to provoke. Just bright eyes that seemed to stare into him, lighting a desire to push back into Cas and kiss him.

He licked his lips, drawing in a shaking breath. He had not expected Cas to just accept that news, what with the way he seemed to hide his wings. “T-they were beautiful.”

Cas hummed just above Dean’s lips and he felt the vibration to his toes. “Interesting. What did they look like?”

“Giant wings of flame that flowed from your back and flared above your head.”

“Oh.” Pink, somewhat chapped lips brushed over his own, and Dean wasn’t sure what to make of any of it. Cas grinned against his mouth and pulled back. “You did get a good look at them.”

“I did.” His eyes felt heavy-lidded with desire now, and he asked softly, “Cas, are… are you a phoenix?”

Cas pushed away from him and off the bed, stretching as he went, the white t-shirt rising with the movement and revealing sharp hip bones, and dark if delicate treasure trail. His mouth went dry at the sight, and he swallowed hard as Cas walked out of the camper. “See you in the morning, Dean.”

And he was gone. 

Cas sat on the camper’s roof and stared as the now-waning moon set in the west while the burning light of dawn rose in the east. He still felt a bit antsy after the full moon and with the surprise that Dean had seen his wings, and the dawn always felt best on his feathers.

That Dean had seen them was really extraordinary, since the only ones who could see his wings were creatures and his potential mate.

Since Dean was as human as a human could get, that left the potential mate, and Cas didn’t know how he felt about that. Good, perhaps? It had been thousands of years since he had last run into someone who might be his match.

With the man’s gorgeous soul, it somehow didn’t surprise Cas that Dean fit the criteria to match a phoenix.

Even at guessing what he was, Cas knew that there were more fairytales than truths about phoenixes and their kin. Dean wouldn’t quite know what to do with the information.

He pulled himself up as the sun fully broke the horizon and lit the land. The shadows of the mountains and trees still left some cold spots, but Cas saw many reptiles climb onto the highest rock to warm themselves. It was a dangerous thing to do, as predatory birds liked to snatch them from their naps for breakfast.

The earth around him unfurled, crisply cool, and smelling of sage and ripe earth. Further up, where they were headed, the trees were tall and beautiful. The earth was fertile and veined with streams and creeks. The mountains were green and lively with cattle and wild things.

It was quite lovely. It was why he had chosen his own little town, aside from being assured by Megara that no one would bother him.

He unfurled his wings to catch as many rays as he could, the thin atmosphere sharpening the light so it felt like tiny acupuncture pins in his wings: slightly painful, yet good. He didn’t like to sunbathe too often because of sharpness of the sunlight, but also because there were too many humans nearby in Megara’s village. He was already considered odd enough with his awkwardness and sudden need to flee an interaction. He didn’t need to add to his reputation as the town weirdo by just standing in the sun every morning, just because humans couldn’t see his wings.

Except for _Dean_.

 

Having been awakened by a huge fiery bird, Dean sat at the tiny table and sullenly ate his breakfast burrito. Sullenly because it was fucking 7am, and who the fuck is voluntarily up at 7-fuckin’-am?

Apparently Cas.

Cas handed him a cup of coffee from the tiny coffeemaker the camper had, and handed over the sugar. He sat in the opposite seat and seemed completely delighted to watch Dean gnaw on his burrito. That wasn’t cool, man. He was looking at Dean like he was the _neatest creature on the planet_ , and Dean was pretty fucking sure that being one of the last phoenixes was supposed to take that honor.

He was on his last two bites when his phone rang, and he fished it out of his jeans’ pocket to see Charlie was calling. _Finally_!

“Hey, Red! I was gonna call you since we finally got some signal round here. What’s up? You find anything?” He shoved the last two bites of burrito into his maw and chewed loudly just to gross her out.

“Ew, are you eating on the phone with me? Gods, get some manners!”

“G’em ye’self,” he said through sausage and egg, flipping the phone and turning on the speaker.

“You are so gross, man.”

“Y’luv me,” he managed, as he tried to swallow.

“Yeah, I do.” She huffed a sigh, “I wanted to update you on the information I’ve found. Pohjola has been around since the mid-1800s, said to be founded by a Scandinavian group who wanted to keep their pagan beliefs alive. They apparently escaped persecution in Finland and ended up there. It’s supposed to be a quaint village with a small Santa land theme.”

“Not creepy at all,” Dean muttered.

“Hey, at least it’s not clowns or vampires!”

He had to give her that one.

“Do you know who they worship, by any chance?” Cas asked, frowning hard with thought.

“Uh… no? There’s nothing mentioned in what I’ve been able to find.”

“Can you focus on that? I feel that it’s important.”

“Uh, yeah! Can do! I’ll see what I can dig up. I’ll see if Meg has anything too.”

“Wonderful. I believe it will be helpful.”

After that, Dean and Charlie caught up on logistics, and how she was going to just meet him in Lebanon so she could access the Men of Letters’ archives. The Men of Letters were primarily just observers who took the data and information that Hunters gathered and added them to the archives. They generally had information on every sort of creature out in the world, but they were not very keen on working with Hunters themselves. Generally, Hunters had to get someone in the Bunker to research. Charlie was one of the Men of Letters (damn their sexist name) so she could access secret and very helpful stuff.

Dean avoided it like it was a den of rugarus. No way was he gonna be stuck in a magical box full of _books_ and _stuffy sorts_ who wouldn’t even let you bring a beer in to refresh yourself while buried in dusty old research or even let you put your feet on the table as you read. It was also like they’d never heard of a couch! Who the Sheol researches for 12-hours straight in a wooden chair that made your ass numb?

They said goodbye and hung up, while Cas remained pensively seated in the other chair.

“I feel this is the right path since between the cloudberries and Pohjola as clues, I suspect we’re dealing with something Scandinavian, but that unfortunately doesn’t limit our possibilities.” Cas finally remarked.

“Well, we’re not far off from Poo-joe-la, so whatever. We’ll just wing it.”

Cas smirked. “That’s Poh-yo-la.”

Dean waved the correction away. “Yeah… _whatever_. Let’s get on the road to monster central. The faster we gank whatever’s killing people, the sooner it’s Miller Time.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Organic. Blind crones. Gnomes. MICROBREWS!!

  _The hammer of the gods / We'll drive our ships to new lands / To fight the horde, and sing and cry_

Pohjola was, as villages in the mountains go, weird.

It was weird because it looked like a bizarre Scandinavian Santa Village had been plopped down amidst the trees of the far northern reaches of New Mexico, technically not that far from the Aztec ruins or Chaco Canyon. That reminded Cas that New Mexico also fed _him_ natural energies, what with it being the center of the world for the natives there, the emerging point of where the tribes said their ancestors came into the world.

Cas had heard them called “ _Hisatsinom_ ” or “Ancient People” under the Hopi, but he knew the white conquerors had renamed those ancestors “ _Anaasází_ ,” or “enemy ancestors.”  They weren’t enemies, as the Navajo word suggested, and Cas knew in time the word had come to merely mean “ancient ancestors” in English. Even in Tewa, their word for Ancient Ones was “ _Se'da_ ,” said nothing of enemies.

But, Cas wondered if it was significant that the village was so close to the doorway to the next world? The fact Aztlán was so nearby seemed conspicuous (and also a reason he stayed in the New Mexico, where the magic in the earth was high).

Dean merely seemed bemused by the whole thing, after all, he was used to adobe and pueblo styles, not whatever _this_ was.

 _This_ was an obnoxiously quaint village, just a widespot in the road like so many other places in New Mexico. But it was more charming than most villages, deliberately so, it looked like. However, crossing into its boundaries made Cas feel anxious and a bit suffocated.

There was a tiny grocery that also served as a gas station and a sandwich shop. It was near the highway so people could stop for gas, but there were so many shiny inviting signs urging people driving through to stop by “Snow Globe Hill,” the apparent name of the Santa Village.

And as the truck huffed its way up the mountain, the small village with the few homes near the highway blossomed out into an actual Santa village with a large sign overhead made to look like a half-furled red ribbon and with embossed white letters that led into what looked like, really, an odd Scandinavian village in the middle of nowhere.

There was at the edge a small ‘hotel’ that Dean pointed out, and it was with some trepidation that Cas parked and eyed the building. It was only one-story tall and square as a box, painted an off-white with green shingles on the angled roof and the windows had carved trimmings that looked surprisingly like Russian _dacha_ : intricate, lovely, and painted the same green as the shingles, with white edges. The hanging oval-shaped sign said, “Sampo,” and Cas couldn’t quite remember what that meant, but he memorized it to add to Charlie’s research list.

Dean grimly eyed the place and got out of the truck, stretching and showing off a strip of colorfully tattooed skin between his shirt and his jeans. Cas swallowed hard and dragged his eyes away, aware that Dean knew he was watching by the flicker of pink flirtatiousness in his aura. The man was going to drive him mad!

Grumbling, he too climbed out of the truck and they made their way to the front desk. The front desk was made of polished birch and it glowed in his magical sight. It didn’t seem deadly, but he noted when Dean leaned on it, it sucked up a tiny bit of his energy, which would undoubtedly make him feel a bit more tired than when he walked in. Dean gave the desk’s bell a sharp thump and it rang loudly, echoing a bit.

While they waited for service, Cas eyed the rest of the reception area. The room was plain and lovely, all the furniture made of birch and magicked to sap away a touch of human energy, and Cas had to wonder where all that human energy was going…? Still, the inside was all deep green rugs and white walls, with a pair of reindeer antlers on a plaque hanging over the stone-wrought fireplace (currently unused), and the small selection of brochures that looked to guide people to white water rafting nearby or even horseback riding. Here and there, a duck figurine took a spot in the otherwise empty room, the blue-billed duck with the sleek black and white feathers sticking out a bit.

He turned as he heard a friendly voice call out from the hall, “Hello! Welcome to Sampo!”

The woman was, admittedly, beautiful. Her long blond hair was tied back, and it was so light colored, it looked almost white. Her face was a tanned circle with straight dark eyebrows and wide amber eyes framed with long dark lashes. Her nose was straight and even, and even her lips were plump and pink, parted in a friendly smile.

She also didn’t have a readable aura, which really could mean anything from spells, protective jewelry, or even something worse…like being a creature.

Dean seemed to be shocked into silence as the woman approached, a simple off-the-shoulder top revealing more tanned skin and dark tattoos along her arms that Cas couldn’t make out. But she had a fine figure in her jeans and blood-red cowboy boots before she was obscured by the counter, and even Cas, who rarely looked at women, could admit that.

She grinned at them as she dug under the counter, pulling up books and papers, and she asked, “How are you folks doing? Staying in Pohjola long?”

“Possibly a week,” Dean managed, adding a flirtatious smile that made Cas want to hit him. “We’re here to check the place out for my niece’s 10th birthday. She was talking about Santa Villages and how she wanted to meet reindeer, and, well, this one here is a bit closer than Colorado Springs!”

She nodded, her amber eyes flashing in the streaming sunlight. “What a wonderful idea! There’s so much to do here. We are so close to the Aztec Ruins and all sorts of nifty sights!”

Dean nodded wisely and jerked his thumb back towards Cas. “This is Cas. He drove me here as a favor. Y’know, last minute car trouble, but I had already taken the time off to come check this place out.”

The woman hummed and Cas watched her eye Dean’s earrings. “Well, that’s fantastic! We don’t get many visitors this time of year. Most people want to stop by in late autumn and winter.”

Grinning, Dean said, “I can believe it. But her birthday is in a few weeks, and I just thought I’d get the lay of the land, see if her daddy can afford it and if she’d even enjoy it.” He shrugged. “Although I doubt I’ll get it, being an adult, but I’m told I’m childish enough that maybe I can wing it.”

“Maybe, indeed.” She kept smiling and said, “Well, it’s currently $50 per person, per night to stay here in the main building. It’s $100 per night if you want to rent one of our cottages...more if you prefer something fancy.”

Her smile tightened slightly as she looked over at Cas. “The park is open until 9pm, because that’s when the festive lights come on in Santa’s House and along Candy Cane road. If you plan to enter Santa’s House, there’s a $30 charge for an all-access pass, with all the rides included.”

She then slowly ran her gaze over Dean and added lasciviously, “Big fella like you, though… not sure you’d even fit.”

“Ha ha, well, thankfully I won’t have to. I can have Cas here try them out for me.” He smirked over at Cas, the amused yellow coloring the sides of his aura, and Cas just rolled his eyes and turned away.

“Well, maybe you’d like to check out the grounds with me later,” Cas heard the woman purr and turned in time to see her stroking the back of the hand Dean had on the desk, looking up at him through her eyelashes, and even leaning in so Dean could get a good (braless, Cas realized) look down her shirt, a silver chain dipping in-between the two globs of mammalian flesh.

“Um, maybe later,” Dean coughed, and slide his hand away to look at the paperwork she had spread out. “I think we’ll take a cabin, the cheapest one since we’re kinda on a budget here.”

She smirked and took one of the sheets of paper, turning it so Dean could see it. “Our cottage, Manala, is out on the edges and it’s a fair walk to Pohjola. Maybe fifteen minutes?” She shrugged. “On skis, it’s much faster.”

“We’ll take it,” Dean said, not even looking at the description, and pulling out a credit card.

“Good,” she murmured, the sun again striking her eyes and making them glitter. “By the way, my name is Aya, and I’m the manager of this place.”

“Nice to meet you, Aya,” Dean smiled flirtatiously, “Call me Brian Young, and this is my friend, Cas Parrot. Looks like we’ll be living in Cabin… 13?”

He raised his eyebrow and she shrugged as she got him to finish filling out the rental contract and sign the credit card receipt. “There are reasons why it is so far out and so very cheap.”

“It’s not haunted or anything?”

“Not haunted, no.” Aya smiled and handed Dean a map. “You’ll need to take this back road to the left of this building. It’ll take you all the way out. I do suggest that you stock up on food, because although we do serve breakfast here, it is mostly yogurt, muesli, fruits, and beverages. All other meals can be purchased at one of the shops, but I do recommend going to the grocery store for anything more substantial and for snacking.”

They both nod, Cas just happy to get out of the building and away from the predatory woman, who was now leaning against the counter with some glee and waving them out with her fingers.

They had been in town for perhaps half an hour and he couldn’t wait to get out. 

Cas drove the truck along, but it seemed more reluctant than usual to move up and along the gravel roads until they saw the cabins. The cabins were frankly closer together than Dean would’ve thought, with their wood-paneled sides painted in cheerful reds and greens. There were two cabins to a small lot, with two much larger and many-storied cabins that looked made for large groups at the top of the circle the cabin lots made.

Cabin 13 (or as Cas insisted, “Manala.” “What does that mean, anyway?” “Purgatory.” “Great. Just fucking great.”) was a very small cabin compared to the rest, the outside rougher and made of logs, the porch off the ground in case of snow, and there was an area to store boots or sleds. It had bay windows, which would’ve been nice on a cold winter’s nice, but not so much when it was still 70 degrees Fahrenheit during the day.

They pulled into the parking spot next to the cabin and Dean grabbed his duffle as he clambered out. “Looks okay,” he muttered as he eyed it.

Shuffling onto the porch, Dean looked around and saw they were in the one “lone” cabin and the most rustic looking one.

It didn’t look… shabby. It just looked smaller and a bit more worn down than most of the others, and much closer to the actual tree line of white birches than to the main driveway back to the village.

The gravel crunched under his boots and he looked around the cabin to scope out the weak points.

Not five minutes later, he sighed. It was practically made of weak points.

The natural wood logs it was built with had mortar in-between the logs instead of nails. Mortar was no block for ghosts or pixies. He’d have to go inside and investigate the windows, but he was certain they weren’t made to anti-pixie specification.

They were also too close to the woods for comfort, and, as a Hunter, it made him nervous that who knew what would crawl out looking for meats, especially when pickings were slim?

At least there was no door gap, he noted as he put the key in and unlocked it with a click, but the handle looked like brass, not iron or silver. There was no embedded salt stone installed into the door and window frames to keep things out, and, again, no iron or silver. Absolutely not creature proof!

Inside, there was a comfy-looking large black couch with a coffee table, a moderate-sized TV, a tiny kitchen with a two-hotplate stove, an electric kettle, a coffee machine, and a narrow refrigerator all in blinding white. Opposite the kitchen was a small frontloading clothes washer and what looked like a wooden drying rack leaning against it.

But the thing that blew him away for foolishness? There was only one bed. A queen-sized bed, with big fluffy white pillows, embroidered decorative pillows, and a black cover that looked like it might be a duvet.

“Not bad,” he muttered, eyeing the area. He supposed one of them could take the couch, but it didn’t seem like Cas actually slept a lot or often so maybe it would be okay?

Not that it mattered, he supposed, feeling that heat bubble in his core when he thought about dragging Cas to bed. He should’ve made him stay in the camper with him.

Regrets, regrets.

He dropped his duffle on the bed and pulled out a large bag of industry-standard anti-creature salt. After someone sued a practitioner for using less than 100% pure and blessed salt, the Hunting community had made sure everyone one carried that and silver dust with them. With a sigh, he started to salt all the entryways, but still, he wasn’t sure what to do with all the porous (mortar-filled!) walls...? Maybe he’d ask Cas. He always had good ideas.

When Dean had finished his salting, he grunted and put the salt away. He then walked outside to find Cas, because the weirdo hadn’t come inside yet. He doubted salt would stop Cas, but it was an interesting thought. What if all the salt made him sick or claustrophobic? What if he refused to come in at all?

Having wound himself up with worry, Dean wasn’t expecting to find Cas on the edge of the woods behind the cabin and peering at the trees narrowly.

“You okay there, Cas?” He called.

Cas didn’t turn, just waved him over, and when Dean was close enough, said, “Dean…these are silver birch trees.”

Dean looked at the white bark. “Yeah, so what?”

Rolling his eyes, Cas exasperatedly said, “Dean, do you know anything about trees?”

Dean shrugged. “A little. I watch out for rowans. That one’s for witches.”

“Yes, well, I think we have a bit more to worry about than just witches,” Cas muttered, “Silver birch trees don’t _grow_ here. It’s too dry. They must have been imported from somewhere else, and something must be keeping them alive because this many silver birch trees in somewhere like New Mexico?” His eyes behind the coke bottle glasses grew large. “Inconceivable!”

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means,” Dean smirked.

Cas stared him blankly. “What? I’ve only used it once… I don’t understand…?”

This time Dean rolled his eyes and even threw up his hands in disgust. “Not even the _Princess Bride_? You heathen!”

Confused, Cas continued on, ignoring Dean’s outburst, “Well, I think we’re definitely in the right spot. It also explains the furniture in the lobby.”

“What about the furniture in the lobby?”

“You didn’t notice?”

Dean shook his head.

“The furniture is also made of silver birch. It steals minute amounts of energy from humans who touch it.”

“No, I didn’t notice that!” Dean squawked. “What the fuck do you mean it ‘steals energy’?”

“I mean it probably felt like all your traveling exhaustion hit you at once, and you just wanted to lay down and rest.”

Dean scowled as he tried to remember that moment. When he had leaned against the counter, he did remember feeling even more tired than when he had walked in, but–like Cas said–put it down to travel exhaustion.

“Sonuvabitch,” he growled under his breath, “ _I’ve been whammied!_ ”

He glared towards the main office and growled, “Is she a fucking witch? _Is she?_ ”

“I don’t think so,” Cas said calmly, “I think we’re dealing with something much bigger than just a witch. I mean, you said it yourself, they’ve taken down whole prisons and emptied some villages. It would take at least a coven to accomplish that. Or such a high-level witch, she’d practically have to be a god.”

“Great, just fucking great. Super witches. Like the _normal_ kind ain’t bad enough.”

Cas patted his shoulder with a warm, firm hand. “By the way, I think we’re going to have trouble with gnomes and trolls.” He nodded grimly. “Should be an interesting evening. I think we’d best get dinner before settling in for the night.”

He strode away, leaving Dean sputtering. “Did you just say fucking _gnomes_? Gnomes are dangerous? That's a thing? _Seriously_? And _trolls_? C’mon Cas, you’re fucking with me, right? _Right?_ Aw, _C’MON! FUCKING GNOMES! GIVE ME A BREAK!!_ ”  

The Santa Village (or Snow Globe Hill) was not very large, in Cas’s estimation.

It had been built in the shape of a horseshoe, for one, and at the center was a huge Christmas tree with dozens of fake presents under it. Right behind the tree, as guests walked toward the main gates, there was an ice rink where kids (and adults) could practice skating. Even in the warm weather, it was frozen solid. Cas sensed a phase crystal implanted at the base of the pond being used to maintain the water’s solid state, but nothing sinister.

Not like feeling around their cabin.

Dean, however, looked distinctly spooked. He was a bit pale and his gaze kept darting at all the small shops and the few people wandering the promenade.  Cas suspected it was that the shops they walked by looked to also be people’s homes. The front of the shops had large shutters that opened up to reveal counters that allowed people to view their wares and workshops, while smiling blonds of all shapes and sizes peered out of them, grinning and offering samples of whatever they were selling to passersby.

At first, Dean was ecstatic at getting free food, if his happy grins and groans meant anything, but then he realized that the merchants never _stopped_ grinning. There were a few towheaded children running around in what looked like some sort of traditional wear, and, once he understood, he pointed it out to Cas that _all_ the merchants were wearing the odd outfits: brightly-colored pullovers in blue or green over pants for the boys and men, while women wore similarly colored dresses, all of them bearing woven decorations in yellows, greens, and reds. A few wore matching hats, but it was so out of place in New Mexico, it was a bit discomfiting.

Add that none of their auras were visible to his eyes, and it was unnerving him more than he cared to explain.

“What the fuck is going on here, Cas,” Dean whispered, leaning in so that his breath brushed Cas’s ear, “Children of the fucking Corn? Some weird in-bred Flowers in the Attic crap?”

Cas had no idea what Dean was referring to and said so, causing the human to throw his hands in the air with frustration. “Would it kill you to watch just ONE movie?”

“I’m not good with technology, Dean.” He glared. “Or did you not notice the lack of it anywhere near me?”

Dean shrugged and paused to eyeball a counter of small wooden toys, ignoring the grinning, bearded man behind the counter. They were admittedly cute and rather cunning puzzle boxes, carved toys with wheels, and adorable dolls. “I did notice, but for all I know, you just hate tech.”

“More like it hates me,” he grumbled, picking up a vivid orange pig with scarlet red wheels.

The bearded fellow (his name tag said “My name is JARI”) kept grinning and said, “I have these in many colors, if you are interested.”

Cas saw no real deception in the man’s face; there was just a tinge of discomfort and the white lie of his grin.

Cas smiled back, contrite at leading the fellow on. “I don’t have or know any children to gift this to. It’s lovely work though.”

The man (Jari) continued to grin and then nod. “My family came from Scandinavia with the knowledge of woodworking.” He pointed out towards all the buildings and any filigree work carved into the wood to look festive. “Me and mine are responsible for those touches!”

“How long have your people been here?”

Jari, still grinning, said, “Oh, I don’t know. A thousand years? More? Less? Time passes differently in a small village, y’know?”

Dean shook his head. “Nah, wouldn’t know. City kid, myself.”

“How is it that your family has been here that long?” Cas was confused. That would have meant at least 400 years before the land had been ‘found’ by the Vikings, but there was again no indication of deception. The man must really believe it.

Shrugging, but still grinning, Jari replied, “I dunno. There are tales of doorways and duck’s eggs. Myths, y’know? That slipping through Pohjola brings you here.”

“Duck eggs?”

Cas hid a smile at Dean’s question, as Jari replied, “Oh yah! The world was created when a duck built a nest on the knee of Ilmatar, Goddess of the air, and it burned her, so she cast it off. From the broken eggs came the Heavens and the Earth, and from the white came the moon, from the yolk the sun, from the white bits rose the stars, and from the darker parts came the clouds.”

“A…duck?” Incredulousness crept into Dean’s tone, and Cas snickered.

“No less odd than the world popping into existence out of thin air,” Cas chuckled, “Or that it was a cosmic egg, in general.”

Dean grimaced as he was laughed at but added, “Hey, I don’t believe in any of it! But, still…that must’ve been a Hera-blessed duck with a monster ass to push out the world!”

Cas and Jari shared a glance and laughed harder, while Dean sulked over not being taken seriously. Still, Jari handed over a small coupon as he gasped out his final chuckles, his grin a bit more natural. “You’re both very amusing! Please take this coupon. It will give you a discount on the Santa’s House!”

Dean took it and shoved it in his wallet, while Cas said good-bye with a smile and wave.

“Ukko protect ye!” Jari shouted after them, still smiling, but Cas couldn’t ignore the faint flickering of guilt over his face, and his aura still nowhere to be seen.

They walked along a bit more, pausing to take in the frozen pond. The Christmas tree in the village center was a real tree, the decorations on it hand carved. The presents at the base of it were garishly colored, except for a few odd wooden ones that were merely gilded with gold along the edges. They were small in comparison to the other gifts, palm-sized instead of the size of a breadbox.

Dean hummed and pointed. “Look, they have an angel on top? Doesn’t that seem odd?”

Cas narrowed his attention on the tree topper. “It’s not an angel. It’s a winged _haltija_.”

“Okay, and that’s a what? A grinch or something?”

Cas rolled his eyes. “I’m not sure what that is, but from your sarcastic tone, I suspect nothing good.” He eyed the haltija. “It’s…I guess you could say it’s a fairy. But… it supposedly protects things. Like it’s set up to guard the new village, so it’s quite possible that tree topper has been there for ages.” Cas paused. “Maybe literally ages if this village is as old as Jari said.”

“Jari?”

“The toymaker?”

“OH! Him? Yeah, he did say that.” He tugged Cas towards Santa’s House. “Yeah, not creepy at all.”

Santa’s House was one of those monuments to nostalgia that either succeeded wildly or failed. Like inviting clowns or a magician to birthday parties, where all the world-weary children just sneered at them, or just adored them and were in awe.

It was a large wooden building with a thatched roof, a large sign indicating it was ‘Santa’s House’ and to its sides were two metal gates that allowed entrance or exits to the rides and activities once a symbol (or something) was stamped on the back of people's hands and perused by attendants. Or so it seemed to Cas as he watched tired children being dragged from the playgrounds by exhausted-looking adults.

“Let’s take a look, shall we?” Dean grabbed Cas’s hand with warm, callused fingers, confusing him slightly with the faint pink in Dean’s aura again, but he was forced to ignore it as they entered the House.

“Fuckin’ Tophet, it’s like Rudolph threw up in here,” Dean muttered, cringing a bit as a big puffy Santa nylon balloon with a fellow-puffy Frosty the Snowman danced and bounced to Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree. There was a whole shelf of dancing Santa dolls, in various outfits, and a wall stocked with snow globes with miniatures of the village inside. Stanchions and red velvet ropes were set up to make waiting in line easier, but there were no other visitors in the building except them.

Up front, beyond the stanchions, there was a large reception desk with an old woman at the helm. Like the rest of the village, Cas couldn’t read her aura, and he wondered what they were all protected by?

Also like the rest of the merchants (save the hotel keeper, Aya), the old woman was dressed in what looked like traditional clothing of bright blue with red trim. Unlike the others, her tunic was festooned with bright silver medals and buttons that jingled down the front and trickled over and behind her neck. Her hair was white under her cap and she stared at them intently, as if trying to read them.

It made Cas shiver, although he knew his disguise was well-done, but something about the crone’s blind, milky gaze made him feel like it wasn’t enough to fool her.

“Welcome to Santa’s House! How can I help you?”

Her voice sounded as if she were deliberately trying to be scary, which seemed odd considering she worked in a Santa Village, but Dean replied, “Just here for a couple of days. Looking around before we go get dinner.”

The milky eyes seemed sharpened their gaze on Cas again, and he shivered faintly at the thought she could _see_ him. “The park closes in about an hour,” she bluntly replied, “You’re better off coming back tomorrow to enjoy _everything_.”

Her emphasis sent a shudder through him and he felt Dean trying to control himself too. “Ah, yeah, we can, uh, do that.” Dean stepped back but kept his eyes on the crone, who was smiling horribly at them. “We’ll just… yeah, good-night!”

He grabbed Cas’s shirt end as he backed out, and even with the falling temperatures, Cas could see the sweat beading at Dean’s hairline.

As soon as the door closed and they were out of range, Dean spat, “Holy shit, man! Did you get a load of her? What is she? A monster or what? Werewolf?” He swiped at his brow. “Fuck I hope she’s just a werewolf…”

“She’s not a werewolf, Dean.” Which was true, but the issue of what she _really_ _was_ terrified him, and he was not frightened of much. “I actually don’t know what she is. I’m… a bit blind in this place.”

Dean stopped his long strides to turn and stare at Cas. “Blind?”

Cas shrugged. “I have a…well, second sight is as good a way to put it as any. I can’t read any of these people. They seem to be protected by something.”

Dean scowled and pointed at himself. “Can you read me?”

Suppressing his urge to grin, Cas nodded. “Like a book.”

He wasn’t sure what made him wink as he did so, but Dean colored from his neck to his ear tips, and it was adorable enough that Cas didn’t regret it. “However,” he added as Dean gaped like a gasping fish for a moment, “I can’t read your mind, rest assured.”

Dean’s dimples appeared when he pressed his lips together in discontent, but he shook himself off and turned back to the road leading to the cabin. “Let’s just go get food. I’m starving for something that’s not a sandwich.”

“Of course, Dean.”

The fucking grocery store-slash-sandwich shop was a disappointment in junk food. It was alarmingly geared towards yuppies and vegans, and Dean was hard put to keep the pout off his face when he saw signs that persistently read “ORGANIC.”

“It’s not the end of the world, Dean,” Cas murmured as Dean glowered at gluten-free chips, trying to set them on fire with his mind.

“Might as well be if we’re forced to eat this shit!” He gestured at the bags of air-popped popcorn, the stone-milled baked blue corn chips, the pita chips, and the fancy ‘all-natural’ cheese puffs. “My brother would’ve orgasmed over this natural shit. I just want Doritos and some fucking cheap beer!”

“They have beer.”

Dean turned his glare on Cas. “ _Micro-brewed_ , Cas. Do I look like a gods-damned douche who drinks that hipster shit?”

Cas huffed and turned his back as he walked away from Dean’s tantrum. “I’m going to look at their apples.”

“Hipsters, Cas!” Dean hissed at his back, ignoring the looks a few old ladies were giving him as they picked out their couscous across the way.

Groaning, Dean gave into his needs versus the stigma of buying organic, and–sulkily–bought his food. If he had known he was going to be forced into a Whole Foods Gehenna, he would’ve found Wal-Mart somewhere along the way to stock up on Del Sol, Doritos, and microwave burritos.

On the way back to the cabin, Dean continued his minor rampage about micro-brew beers, hipsters, and how kale was disgusting and should never have been introduced as a possible food source.

“I mean, it’s not just _green_ , it’s like an _evil_ green! Kinda like how brussel sprouts and lima beans are Disney villain green, y’know?” He poked at the beer bottle’s label, looking over it for signs of pure douchebagginess and general ‘good-for-you’ labels. “I mean, what’s everyone got against a good-ole-fashioned mass-produced beer? Tastes pretty good and it’s cheap so you can buy more! Not this twenty-bucks a six-pack bullshit!”

“Dean,” Cas finally said, “I don’t care about beer.”

Affronted, Dean leaned over towards him to point out the label, “ _Are you serious?_ Look at thi–“

“I’m driving, Dean,” Cas grumped, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a hard shove. “Also, we need to talk about the situation before we get back. I’m not sure how much… privacy we’re going to receive once we return.”

Dean paused and launched a filthy leer. “Why, Cas? You gonna do something raunchy?”

Cas threw him a look that would’ve melted glass and ground out, “No, Dean! I mean that Hunter precautions might not work against gnomes and trolls! Not to be obvious, but they don’t work against me.” He huffed. “If it weren’t for the sheer amount of power it would take to shield that large of a space to hide the village, I wouldn’t be so concerned about it. But…it’s powerful enough that it’s suppressed my general abilities.” His mouth tightened in the corners with disapproval. “That’s frankly enough that I’m apprehensive about it.”

It was at that point that Dean noted Cas looked a bit paler than he had before and seemed to be lightly sweating, something that the top temperatures hadn’t managed to do.

“Are you okay?” He asked quietly, concern suddenly flooding him.

“I’ve been better,” Cas bit out, and Dean noticed his knuckles were a bit white where he gripped the steering wheel. “It’s starting to feel more oppressive as the evening wears on. Ask me again at the witching hour. I may have a better grasp.”

He gagged for a moment on nothing and swallowed hard. “Or…perhaps not,” he rasped out.

Dean frowned and put the beer away. “Tell me what I can do?”

Cas shook his head and gulped heavily. “I’m not used to being under a magically constructed dome that contains and slowly absorbs human energies. It will just take me a while to find my equilibrium.”

“Right.” Dean leaned back in his seat and thought about the situation. “What do you think is going on, then?”

“I’m not a Hunter, Dean,” he threw back caustically, “you tell me.”

Rolling his eyes, Dean quietly grouched, “Gods, you’re moody as fuck.” Louder, he added, “If it’s a constructed dome, I’d guess…magician or witch? Maybe a sorcerer?” He peered out into the dark. “But to be this powerful, create a dome the size of this village? It’d have to be a _monster_ of a magician…I’m open to suggestions, O great beast!” He was teasing and enjoyed the brief flash of annoyance Cas gave him, his blue eyes lighting up for a second.

“I don’t know,” he said roughly, “And really, that’s the worst part.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Creepy crones. Birches, oaks, & rowans: OH MY! Unexpected & unwanted visitors. Short sexy times.

_How soft your fields so green / Can whisper tales of gore / Of how we calmed the tides of war / We are your overlords_

Cas was uneasy. It wasn’t a new feeling for him, but it was certainly not one he’d entertained in a long time. Not since humans had filled the “New World” with their electricity and iron, and he’d first been left behind by his flock.

He had kept watch while Dean had eaten his meal (organic macaroni and cheese, which he had endlessly complained about and had added even more cheese, just to make it unhealthier) and prepared for bed.

Dean had turned off the lights, reassured by Cas’s statement that he didn’t need the illumination to keep watch, and fallen into a light sleep, undoubtedly due to years of hunting.

Cas hadn’t lied when he said he was worried about the witching hour.

If this was truly the work of a magician or a witch, that would be the peak of their strength. It was also _his_ weakest time of day–his power’s nadir–what with the sun obscured for hours yet to come. He was already functioning at much lower potency than he usually did at this time of night, and it worried him that he wouldn’t be able to protect Dean.

It was, therefore, no surprise to him that, at 3am on the dot, a couple of gnomes and a troll bypassed the window Dean had salted and added sigils to and just entered _through_ the cabin’s wood. They were all about a foot high–small for a troll, tall for gnomes–and the gnomes were dressed like the townspeople, but with pointer hats.

“This him?” The troll’s voice was a bit more sibilant than Cas expected, his eyes wide in his red-furred face with its missing nose and large lips. He was missing a tail, or otherwise he might’ve been mistaken for a monkey with the frame of red hair that continued down his back then gradated into dark gray, and that covered his long arms and legs. Thankfully, its torso and loins were covered with a tiny red apron with a festive candy-cane patch in front.

“So she says,” the smaller gnome said, eyeing Dean speculatively. Cas had to appreciate the peculiar accent it had, sounding oddly British but not. “Doesn’t seem all that great to me.”

The slightly larger gnome with the largest hat looked entranced and appeared to be drooling profusely. “He looks _delicious_! Can we snack, Niks?”

The smaller slapped him with the back of its hand. “Shush, Nymi! What would her’s think if ya went off and snacked on the sacrifice? Are ya willin’ to risk it?”

That made the larger gnome step back with a whimper. “Just a taste wouldn’ hurt nobody!” She whined. (Now that Cas was looking, she was wearing a tiny skirt. He didn’t understand, but he supposed if a gnome wanted to, it could.)

“Well,” he finally intoned, moving in behind them with a preternatural grace that appeared to shock them into dumbfounded gaping, “ _I_ certainly wouldn’t recommend it.”

The largest gnome squeaked and bolted through the wall, leaving the other two standing like landed goldfish, with the small gnome trying to speak.

“S-she dinn’t mention you,” he finally stuttered out, goggling at Cas, even as the troll attempted to escape by sidling towards the wall.

Cas pinned it with his gaze, glad he had removed his glasses for the full effect, and the troll looked abashed at being caught and hesitantly shuffled closer to his compatriot.

“She didn’t?” He narrowed his eyes at the tiny things, knowing it was intimidating to most creatures.

“I’m certain she mentioned a second occupant,” Cas reasoned. He could feel his irritation in his blood, the flames wanting to flare off him and dissipate the intruders into ash stain on the varnished floor. _How dare they target his mate!_

The troll licked its oversized lips and scratched its head with a clawed hand. “She mentioned you, but we was told you was gonna be in the trailer.” It gave Cas what would have been classed ‘puppy eyes’ if the wee creature was just a bit cuter. “C’mon, mate! Give us a break! We was just checking on you lot!”

The gnome (Nik?) nodded furiously. “Indeed, indeed! We was told to just check you weren’t out messing about! We was told!” He frowned and twiddled his thumbs. “See, we was told he was a Hunter…and he needed watchin’. That’s all!”

Cas squatted down to their eye level, glowing faintly in the dark room as his anger sparked off him, and asked, “That’s not what it sounded like when you said ‘sacrifice.’” He did the air quotes at them, and the gnome trembled, his dark brown eyes liquid with tears.

“She didn’ say!” He screeched. “She didn’! I’m guessin’! She was talkin’ ‘bout ‘ow ‘andsome ‘e was! I guess’d!”

Cas had been focused so intently on the gnome, he missed it when the troll flung himself at his tiny compatriot, ripped out his throat with its teeth and snarled blood-stained fangs at Cas, “Death isss better than what ssshe’d do!”

The troll came at him, claws and teeth elongated and extended, and Cas flared his flame at him, unsurprised to see the leaping troll turn into a small stone statue that clonked onto the floor with enough force to startle Dean out of what Cas suspected was an enchanted sleep.

“Cas…” He asked groggily, heavily, looking as if he’d slept much deeper than usual, “What’s going on? What was that noise?”

Cas sighed and kicked the stone troll absently. “Nothing, Dean. Go back to sleep.”

Dean grunted and rolled over, while Cas took his seat on top of the couch again, wondering if his flame was going to be enough to stop more than just trolls…?

 

There were some things that Dean didn’t want to know. Sure, he _needed_ to know, but he didn’t _want_ to know.

The fact that whatever they were hunting 1) had made them; 2) thought he was hot; and 3) was gonna make a snack out of him did not make for a happy breakfast conversation.

The stone troll, with its weird mouth full of tiny daggers, its outstretched claws like miniature scythes, and its creepy apron that was still a bright red with a candy-cane patch, was not something he wanted to think about before coffee. He did acknowledge that knowing Cas could turn trolls into stone with his ‘sunlight flames’ was bonus information.

At least the dead gnome had just turned into a pile of dirt and leaves, making the cleanup easy. They just put the stone troll in the closet after Dean took a pic to send to Charlie, with a tagline of "Can you believe this shit?!"

Cas at least waited until he had two cups of burning hot pinon coffee (it was free with the cabin!) in him before adding, “I wonder if we should really go in blind to the Santa House? Perhaps we should wait for more information from Charlie? Or see if we can’t get more information from the locals?”

Dean poured himself a third cup–ignoring how the previous two were sloshing around his stomach as he waited for last night’s leftovers to heat up–and scrubbed a hand through his bedhead. “Well, let’s go check it out at least? How dangerous can it be in full daylight and with kids around?”

He pointedly ignored Cas’s flat look and grabbed the bowl of mac & cheese out of the microwave. “It’ll be fine,” he reassured him around a mouthful of cheesy elbow pasta. “You’ll see.”

Cas narrowed his eyes at him, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and walked away with a huff.

“Party pooper,” Dean muttered as he shoveled in more food. “Always gotta have one.”

 

In the daylight, Santa’s House was a bit creepier, if only because the many Christmas decorations so many months before the actual holiday was out of synch with the rest of the world.

There were a few adults and children walking about, although none of them looked as pleased with the world as Dean Winchester.

That, reasoned Cas, was because of the pile of pastries he had nicked from the dining area of the main lodging, where breakfast was still being served. He was currently chewing animatedly on an _omenalörtsy_ he’d picked up, then he took two more when he realized they were essentially large donuts with stewed apples in them like a pie. He had also pocketed a few _korvapuusti,_ probably because of their resemblance to cinnamon rolls. Cas couldn’t even stop him since the food was free for guests.

The man was making shameless noises through mouthfuls of food, causing Cas to fiercely blush and look in the other direction.

“Can you not tone that down?” Cas asked acerbically, turning back to glare at his shameless companion.

“These folks sure know how to make a donut, man,” Dean groaned around the omenalörtsy, a bit of apple syrup dripping off the edge of his mouth. “Gods curse me, this shit is _good_!”

Cas pursed his lips and swiped out a thumb to catch the syrup without a thought. He ignored Dean pause in his chewing to goggle at him licking the remnant off with his tongue, swiping the digit deliberately and provocatively with the tip. He then winked at Dean and left him gaping, mouth full of food.

Hopefully, that would shut him up for awhile.

The ice skating rink was busier in the early morning than it had been last evening, the pleasure of being able to indulge while it was warm out surely a draw. The amusement park seemed to already be running as well, with screaming children on the two larger rides, a chair-swing ride and a small roller coaster. The rest of the rides were geared for children under 12, with a colorful train and a carousel of holly-wreathed reindeer and Santa-hatted ponies. On the other side of the park were other activities, like sledding with a reindeer, “Rudolph’s Reindeer Barn,” the “Deck the Halls arts & crafts” mall, and what was labeled “The Silver Screen Christmas.”

Dean said the last was for families to produce a tape of holiday songs, a family album of Christmas photos, or a short movie.

Cas didn’t understand the point, but then again…Christmas was when humans got agitated and ran about like chickens with struck off heads–in bright clothing and ghastly smiles. He was rather happy to exist outside their madness.

In the daylight, the House was a two-story wooden structure with a clock in the tower. It was painted taupe with bright green and red shutters, the door dark brown and a huge wreath with interspersed tiny white flowers, small red berries, blinking colored lights, and shiny glass balls in silver and red. In front of it was a red pole with cute Christmas themed signs for where things were located. The blinds were open in the huge bay windows, allowing them to see the short queue of people and children waiting to buy tickets as they wound through the gift shop.

Very few parents, Cas wagered, made it through the queue without a trinket or snack of some sort, as the line looked to pass by every trinket, goody, or collectible before even making it to the counter.

“Still looks like Rudolph threw up,” Dean grumbled around a bite of bread roll.

Cas pointed at the gates that bracketed the House and allowing entry or exit from the activities. Two or three villagers appeared to be working the gates, nodding and waving the people in or out after eyeing the back of their hands as he had observed last night. “They seem to be looking at something.”

Dean popped the last of the bread into his mouth and chewed methodically. Cas had no idea where he put all that food, but waited until Dean’s mouth was clear enough to answer.

Sort of.

“I bet they have like stamps of admission,” he said around the last of his snack, nonchalantly dusting his sugar-encrusted fingers on his jeans. His general insouciance about the whole thing was troubling and somewhat maddening, and Cas suppressed his urge to shake the lovely man.

“Have you noticed anything else different from yesterday?” Dean asked casually, pointedly pulling out his wallet to look for cash.

Cas glanced around furtively and licked his lips nervously. Half of the villagers were attempting to stealthily keep an eye on them, all grins wiped away by a general air of vigilance, and all of it was focused on them. “You mean the attitude of the villagers?”

“Yep.” Dean popped the ‘p’ for emphasis, and handed Cas a twenty. “They’re all wary of us now.” He flipped his wallet close with his fingers and shoved it in his pocket. “You said one of the gnomes escaped? You think the villagers are in on the whole magic bit?”

“I hate to think that,” Cas answered uneasily. “They seem such likeable folk.”

“Who are killing people, Cas,” Dean reminded him with a gleaming grin and a smack to the shoulder. “Ready to get this over with?”

Cas nodded and followed Dean’s lead into the House.

He noted, as they walked in, that the wreath on the door that had looked like a very average, if large, Christmas wreath, was actually rather odd. It was made of yew branches with bright berries on them, while the tiny flowers looked to be Fairy Flax tucked into the evergreen branches. Even odder, there were some small turnips painted red or green, but with a silver mark that looked familiar and a bit like…a scythe-shaped pendulum? Except with wavy-looking paint marks in the bottom edges.

He frowned at it and tried to think where else he had seen the mark, while Dean blithely queued up, took out his phone, and smirked at whatever he saw.

Cas had known that Dean was messaging Charlie the whole time they had been away, only occasionally calling her because the connection was so bad at Meg’s.

As Dean typed his messages, Cas went back to frowning over where he had seen that mark before. He thought over the last few hours and realized that there had been a silver pendulum thing or a thing that looked like a silver boat on all the stalls. Most of the villagers had been wearing one as a pendant or brooch!

Once he had a grasp on where he had seen it, he tried to understand its meaning. He knew it from somewhere. He peeked over the edge of his glasses to get a better look at the old woman at the front, who was unmistakably blind, but definitely in control of things. Two younger villagers were assisting her with purchases and the stamping (he guessed). The two younger women had tags that read “RAITA” and “TAMI,” but the old woman’s read “LORI.”

It didn’t fit her.

Certainly, the two young women were fresh and lovely as their names, but Lori wasn’t a typically Finnish name. Swedish, maybe. Finnish…not exactly.

So, he thought with a huff, perhaps this was more overall Scandinavian than just Finnish as he thought?

That was a much broader–and troubling–concept than when he walked into the House. Scandinavia was Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and although they shared a lot of things, they were different overall cultures and peoples. Their worship and mythologies were similar but not the same. He sighed heavily at the thought, as he had hoped narrowing it down to just Finland had been helpful in determining the creatures they were dealing with…

“You okay, Cas?” Green eyes were peering at him intently and from a remarkably close range. Without thinking about it, Cas raised his hand to the beautiful face and brushed his thumb along the man’s cheekbone and jaw.

“You are singularly lovely,” he crooned softly, his mind still lost in thought.

The flesh under his finger grew hot with embarrassment, and Dean took a step back. “Do you need to go back to the cabin?” He asked cautiously. “You’re acting stranger than usual.”

Cas blinked and noted from the corner of his eye that the old woman, Lori, was watching them attentively with wet, white eyes and a knowing smirk.

“Ah, yes.” He coughed and cleared his throat. “I was just thinking things over.”

Dean leered and asked flirtatiously, “Not regretting us, are you?”

Chuckling softly, Cas said, “I’d never regret you. You are a highlight of my life, Dean.”

Dean lost his leer and again his face turned fiercely red. He opened his mouth to retaliate, stuttered briefly, glared at him and–without any heat–said, “Shut up.”

Cas spied a bear with a Santa suit and a large cookie heart in its hands and snagged it. “Never,” he declared, and handed over the bear. “My eternal huggy bear!”

Pursing his lips and his face still aflame, Dean grumbled, “Whoever taught you that shit needs their ass beat.”

Cas nodded wisely. “I think Meg would kill you if you tried though.”

Dean just huffed and looked over the bear with a faint blush on his face.

When they finally arrived at the counter, Dean was served by Raita, who up close looked to be in her mid-twenties, while Cas was served by Tami, who was obviously much younger, maybe but seventeen. Aside from their ages, they looked nearly identical.

Even so, Tami reddened and refused to look him in the eye when she took his money and then had to take his hand to stamp it, causing her to blush to her ear tips. He eyeballed the mark and it looked like a curly box that had loops for corners with those similar pendulums on each side and an X in the center. He was also given a small packet distributed in a holiday plastic bag, with a map, a small booklet of coupons and advertisements, and a few short tidbits about the area’s history.

Dean was waiting for him in the entranceway to the park. He squinted at the entranceway, which looked like it was split into three large, marked gateways. There were villagers guarding the other two gates, but no one was guarding the gate made of intertwined, dead birch trees with a black iron sign over it that said “ _Hiisi_.”

His brain started to frazzle as the name translated in his head, and he felt the edges of panic ebbing in.

The other two bizarrely large gates that _were_ being used had a wooden sign arching over the top of the iron gate reading “ _Tuonela_ ” while the other sign on the far left, hanging over a natural wood gate, read “ _Kalewala_.”

“This… is curious.” Cas grabbed Dean’s jacket before he could move towards anything, and asked him, “What do you see, Dean?”

Dean squinted at him like he was insane and said, “Uh, there’s a doorway to the left there and a doorway to the right, and I’m guessing they go to the different park areas?”

“So you don’t see the third gate?” He asked thoughtfully, keeping a firm hold on Dean’s jacket.

“What third gate, man?” Dean peered around. “I mean, I guess if I tried, I _might_ feel a bit of magic something but…”

Cas wondered if anyone else could see the gates because people were weaving around them to get to the doorways. He received his answer when a tired-looking mother who was being pulled by two children was stopped by the younger one. “Look, momma! Those gates are huge! Can we go look at them?”

The mother scowled impatiently and tugged her daughter along. “Mindy, there’s nothing there. Next, you’re going to tell me you saw David the Gnome again!”

The daughter (Mindy) looked up at her mother with watery eyes as she was dragged along towards the wooden gate, her older sister rolling her eyes at how stupid she was. “But he did! There was a whole bunch of them! They were watching us sleep!”

“You’re such a creepy dork,” the older daughter said as they were dragged through the Kalewala gate by their mother and into the darkness. The darkness in the gate took on a gel-like thickness, and swirled around them, seeming to flicker over the family as if it were tasting them.

Cas opened his mouth to warn them of the danger, but the darkness freed them after a moment and he could see the light to the rides before darkness again swirled into place behind the family.

“You okay, Cas?”

He turned to find Dean looking at him with concern. “Ah, yeah…d-did you see that?”

Dean jerked in surprise. “See what? Did I miss something?”

“Those two children and their mother…” he said faintly.

Looking through the dark gate and back at Cas, Dean radiated concern and disbelief. “It’s the amusement park,” he said, “That’s all that’s out there.”

Cas swallowed hard and tried not to worry. “There are three gates here,” he said slowly, cringing as several more parents and children passed through one of the two gates, were swallowed by the inky darkness and then somehow spat out to the other side.

“I...I don’t think I can pass through there. There’s a…barrier?” He shook his head. “The passageway goes through a darkness. The two available gates are labeled ‘ _Kalewala’_ and ’ _Tuonela.’_ I mean, Kalewala is just ‘homestead of the Kaleva people,’ but ‘ _Tuonela’…_ ” He shivered and moved closer to Dean, closing his hand over Dean’s hand and twining their fingers for comfort. “That means ‘land of the dead.’”

“What about the third gate?” Dean whispered into Cas’s ear, moving closer so they were hugging in the entranceway.

 _“Hiisi,_ ” he breathed back, “‘ _Naraka_.’ The Pit of Torment.”

“Oh shit.”

 

If it wasn’t for the fact Cas looked positively terrified, all pale and wide-eyed, his hands trembling and cold, Dean would’ve thought he was joking.

As a Hunter, he had evolved to have more sensitivity to magic than most humans; however, he wasn’t feeling it strongly. He wondered if whatever was messing with Cas’s perceptions was messing with his?

To his eyes, there were two plain exit doors, one marked “Santa’s Playground!” and the other “Reindeer Games.” He didn’t see a ‘darkness’ or whatever, just people stepping from the large entranceway into broad daylight on either side. And, in between them, there was no third gate.

Still, Cas was a creature and had shown himself very capable of seeing things Dean could not. Also, he _trusted_ Cas. If he saw something awful, there was something awful to avoid.

So because Cas refused to move forward towards the exit doors, Dean turned him around and went against the small waves of children and adults heading to have a good time. As they breached the main ticket counter’s room, he felt the eyes of the three women on him as he shifted Cas to squeeze past the stanchions that roped off the queue for entry and got into the edges of the store.

“Excuse me,” the old woman called out, her voice harsh and raspy. It felt like it was brushing against his skin like a steel brush and he tried not to cringe. “You’re not allowed to exit that way.”

“My boyfriend isn’t feeling well,” Dean hollered back, and Cas covered his mouth with his free hand and made a (frighteningly real) retching sound. “I mean, I can take him back through, but he’ll probably yack on your floor.”

He felt the heavy non-gaze of the hag, like the raking of clawed fingers, like she was nothing more than suppressed violence in a small, crooked body. It wasn’t witchcraft, but something deeper. Older.

Dean shivered, his instincts screaming for them to get the fuck out of there, and pulled Cas forward towards the front door with care. “We can get in through the side gates, right? When we come back? We’ll do that, after he feels better.”

The hag stood up, visible above the counter despite her compressed, aged height as her seat was sitting on something like a dais. When she stood, the women at the counter stopped helping customers and stood stiffly before her. “You will be found wanting, trying to bypass the law.”

There was something about the way she said that–darkly and with heavy judgment–and with what Cas said about gateways, he realized they’d somehow sidestepped a landmine of some sort.

“We’ll take our chances,” he called out as he made it to the door and shoved them both into the clear air of daylight. When the door closed behind them, Cas immediately began to breathe more easily, and even Dean had to admit it felt like they were no longer slowly being crushed by the crone’s non-gaze.

But, even as the door closed behind them, Dean was 99% certain that every villager was now watching them, openly and carefully. Before, it had been a feeling of being monitored; now, it was overt. Blue eyes stayed on them, even ignoring customers to keep them in sight. It was unnerving and robotic.

Once Cas could move without help, they fled to the cabin and locked the door, both breathing heavily and sweating.

“What the fuck did we get into, Cas?” He gasped out, leaning against the door.

“I told you we shouldn’t have just jumped in,” Cas groused, turning green, and flinging himself into the bathroom.

Dean heard Cas finally throwing up and swiped a hand over his sweaty face.

“Well, fuck.”

 

Dean made a phone call to Charlie, explaining what Cas had seen (trolls, gnomes, gates, and all) and how the whole village was now suspicious. She had _eeped_ and said she’d get on it, so now they were waiting for Charlie.

Cas hoped she’d get back to them quickly: it was going to get dark out soon. They didn’t have a defense plan for the wooden walls and crappy mortar. There was hardly any iron in the building and that was enough to make Cas think the cabin was usually a slaughterhouse for guests. Most places were at least built to keep out general supernatural pests. There was nothing here to protect them from even the smallest fairy.

Regardless, because Cas was still shaken by the appearance and significance of the gates–and they had time while waiting for Charlie’s intel–they had decided to sit in and watch a movie. So Dean had dug through something called NettleFlexing and found a show called “The Walking Dead” that was (Dean said) about a community of zombies and how they kept depleting their food sources.

It sounded dull, but Dean played up the drama and started the show.

The truth was…Cas had never paid much attention to TV or film. He was too busy hiding, most of the time, or just more interested in what humans did to watch fake tales.

To add to his general discomfort, most electronics really did not fare well in his keep. Something about the magical field he generated tended to cause them to malfunction after a while or especially during transmission.

Megara had stopped trying to get him a cell phone when they failed to connect to networks in his hand, or their batteries ran down too quickly. The ones that exploded were purely flukes. Probably.

As such, sitting in close proximity with Dean Winchester as he explained things in the show, while sharing a bowl of popcorn, was a type of situation he had never experienced before in his millennia of life.

It was at the end of the second episode, where the zombies grasped they weren’t safe from prosecution and needed to run, that Dean paused the show to grin at Cas.

It was a startling moment because Cas comprehended that they had somehow scooted much closer together on the mid-sized couch. Meaning when Dean turned to face him, they were literally face-to-face.

Green eyes widened, pupils dilated, and Dean reddened when he realized how close they were, his breath brushing Cas’s face, the scent of popcorn, beer, and something just Dean beneath that. Cas wasn’t unfamiliar with sex or lust, but rarely had desire struck him in such a fashion. A desire to taste, to hold, to _claim_ …

Unable to quite hold himself back, the scent of Dean’s arousal suddenly striking his nose, he flicked off his glasses with one hand and lifted his other to grasp the Hunter’s jaw and draw him in, taking the soft, plush lips with his own.

It was like flame and lightning and Cas wanted more, on board when Dean shoved the popcorn bowl out of the way, the sound of it hitting the floor meaningless to the moment. Dean pushed him back into the black leather and straddled him, pulling off Cas’s shirt with deft hands. Somehow between heated kisses, sliding tongues, and gasped breaths, Dean also managed to divest Cas of the rest his clothing, leaving only his boxers. Dean’s warm, callused hands roamed over Cas’s chest and hips with several husky, “Oh yeah”s dropping from his mouth, and a few “Fuck yeah!”s. His breath hitched as thumbs possessively skimmed over his hipbones, undoubtedly leaving bruises where Dean gripped him, and his thigh was trapped between Dean’s legs as he ground against it, Dean’s clothing too abrasive on Cas’s sensitive skin.

Cas grumbled against Dean’s mouth and tugged at Dean’s own clothes, forcing the Hunter to strip off his shirt while still kissing Cas like he was a beverage and Dean was dying of thirst.

He could understand that, since the feel of heated, tattooed skin under his hands was electrifying, the slight kinky sting of the protective sigils adding a tingle to his palms and chest. Dean mouthed at his jaw while sliding his erection against his own, Dean having lost his pants and drawers somewhere in the tussle. The desire to _claim, mate, breed_ was strong in Cas’s anima, something that had never happened in the millennia of his existence. It was so new, how it demanded to connect to this person at every level, to taste him fully, to never let the hot human creature out of his sight or his life. He had never felt any emotion as blistering and needy as this.

“Cas, Cas, Cas,” Dean chanted under his breath, nibbling at the muscle between Cas’s neck and shoulder, nipping harder–instinctively–at where a traditional mating bite would go for his kind. His cock jumped at one of Dean’s harder bites–hard enough to leave a bruise on his collar was sure–and Cas reached his limit.

He growled and gripped Dean by the waist, flipping them over so Dean was beneath him. There was a startled exhalation out of Dean as Cas’s move nearly knocked them off the couch. He nuzzled the light trail of hair that escaped from the tattoos of Dean’s chest and down to the nest of curls that smelled musky and purely of Dean. The scent was heady, and he kissed the soft area above Dean’s groin, licking from there down to get the pure taste and scent of _Dean_ in his nose and mouth.

“Please,” he whined piteously, nosing at Dean’s hard cock, “Please Dean! May I taste you?”

He looked up as Dean snorted, green eyes dark and lips red, “Are you fucking kidding me? YES. _Get on it already!_ I’m _dying_!”

Cas grinned up at the Hunter and then he licked a long stripe up the man’s straining cock, licking the precum-beaded tip with a flick of his tongue.

Dean groaned out a long, “ _Fuuuuuck!_ ” and Cas took his time admiring and worshiping his mate, enjoying the weight and taste of pure _Dean_ in his mouth as he sucked him down. Above him, he heard Dean whimpering and swearing, his hands buried in Cas’s hair as he gasped and pushed into Cas’s mouth, tugging on Cas’s head in rhythm as Dean chased his release.

Cas wanted this. He wanted _everything_ , every part of this Hunter. He was willing to wait until Dean was ready for a proper mating, but this…this chance to fully _taste_ Dean’s essence was too much to pass up. He didn’t know when he would be again allowed to have this, to have Dean.

Then Dean came, and it was fine ambrosia to Cas, salty and thick, it slid down his throat and Cas’s anima purred gratefully at the offering. His core felt satisfied for now, as if his flesh was memorizing the taste and feel of Dean at a cellular level. Down to his DNA, he felt he had imprinted fully on this man.

When Dean lightly tugged his hair, Cas gave a kitten lick to the tip of Dean’s sensitive spent cock, kissing his way back to Dean’s mouth and his deep, satisfied kisses. He had come untouched, fully invested in Dean’s pleasure and taste, his own seed spotting the black leather, and Cas didn’t mind that he was in the wet spot.

In his arms was the greatest treasure he had ever found and Cas had no idea how he was ever going to live without him.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Domestic interlude. Charlie is a cockblock.

_On we sweep with threshing oar / Our only goal will be the western shore_

Because Charlie had impeccable timing (beaten only by Dean’s little brother, who was a pro cockblock), she called soon after Cas had sucked his brains out of his dick, and they were relaxing (because Dean hated the word ‘snuggling’) on the couch, kissing and chatting about everything and nothing.

The chorus to “Red Headed Woman” broke the comfortable atmosphere and Dean groaned as he sat up and swiped a hand over his face, scrubbing at his eyes. He felt languid and satisfied to his bones, not wanting to answer the phone, but knowing he needed to. He answered with a grunt, making sure to put it on speaker. “Yeah, Charlie,” he said gruffly, his voice a bit shot from all the earlier excitement, “Whatcha got for me?”

There was a pause and then she asked, “You okay there, Dean… you sound a bit… rough.”

He inwardly groaned at her insight and squeezed his eyes shut, feeling Cas’s warm hand slide to the base of his spine and rub soft circles there. “Just fine, _Charlotte_ ,” he groused and regretted it when she hummed, an annoying little sister hum of knowing things that he wanted unknown.

“I just bet,” she said cheerfully, “Cas keeping you safe and warm, Dean? Anything you need to tell me on that front?”

“I need to tell you to shut up,” he snarked, scratching his fingers through his hair. “Whatcha got for me, Bradbury?”

She snickered but got onto business, “Well, as Cas suspected, they’re all Scandinavian names, but I’m not sure about the villagers and the old woman.” She sighed and shifted the phone, a fast click-clack-clack of her typing audible in the background. “I mean, I asked Meg about it, and she said it stunk of old magic. She also said that gnomes and trolls in Scandinavia tend to be certain types, and from the pics you sent of the troll, she said it was a…” Charlie paused and heaved a sigh. “I’m going to say this wrong, but the translation is ‘Mountain Troll.’”

“ _Metsähiisi_ ,” Cas provided, scowling at the wood. “The wood is from their forests, which is why they don’t need the entrance ways. What about the gnomes?”

“Well, hello to you too, Cas,” Charlie chirped, “Please make sure to prep Dean well before you jackhammer him into the bedding. He’s a bitch when he’s in pain.”

Dean slapped a hand to his face and pinched the bridge of his nose in grief and regret of putting Charlie on speaker. Cas just looked confused and replied, “I wouldn’t think of ever having relations with Dean without the proper care. Why are you implying I would be an inconsiderate lov–“

“STOP!” Dean yelped and put a hand over Cas’s mouth. “Just stop. Charlie, stop teasing him.”

Charlie chuckled and huffed her agreement. “He’s too cute,” she said, “If only I batted for that team…”

“Well, you _don’t_ so get on with it,” he groused.

“Touchy.” He could _feel_ her smirk. “Anyway, Meg says you’re probably dealing with old pagan gods if there’s _that_ much magic being thrown around. You might want to look around the woods for like… standing stones or something.” She paused. “Did you want me to come up there?”

“Nah,” Dean said, leaning back against Cas more and enjoying the peppering of kisses Cas dropped along the side of his neck and throat. “We got it, I think. We just need to get a better idea of what we’re dealing with, and you and Meg are saying gods.”

“Be careful, Dean.” She added with concern coloring her voice. “You said the villagers implied Pohjola had been there for decades. Who knows how deeply this magic goes?”

“True,” Cas interjected from over Dean’s shoulder, “But…why would they be slaughtering so many people now? What’s happened in the last few years that they need to do that?”

“Now that’s a good question,” Charlie said, typing away. “I’d say deforestation due to humans, but that doesn’t explain whole prisons being killed.”

Dean shook his head. “More questions than answers,” he muttered. “I hate that.”

“We all hate that, Dean,” Charlie snorted. “Anyway, let me look into local events and all that. There’s like no library or museum there, right?”

“Nope. Too small I guess?”

“Bummer. I guess we do this the hard way!”

She signed off and Dean sighed. “I guess we ought to go check out the woods, then?”

Cas looked towards the bay windows. “We have maybe two hours of light left. Are you sure you want to risk it?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “The sooner we get out of this insane asylum, the happier I’ll be. Give me some vamps or rugarus any old time to mystical, olden gods. At least killing them is easy.”

“Only because you know how,” Cas corrected, pushing Dean out of his lap and into standing upright. “If we knew how to kill whichever god this was, it’d be easy too.”

“Whatever,” Dean yawned, noting Cas admiring his chest and abdomen. “See something you like, Cas?”

Cas leered at him. “Very much.” Dean started to lean down to get round two going when Cas pushed him away. “Work first, play later.”

“You are _such_ a fucking party pooper.” 

They took a backwoods’ trek out into and up the mountainside, away from the cleared tracks made for vehicles and skiing. The sky was still clear, but Cas could _feel_ the sun setting.

Because of that, it felt as though he was walking blinder than usual and it made Cas uneasy. He was unused to being blind at all, his vision a gift from Kaśyapa himself. Add the confined feeling he got from the village’s boundaries, and he was surprised he hadn’t vomited more. Instead, he gripped Dean’s hand tightly as they hiked up the trails, admiring the views, and trying to locate any clues.

The mountain seemed to be dominated by silver birches, something that was impossible to Cas’s knowledge of trees. “Perhaps we should try walking away from Pohjola,” he said as they passed another lush grove of impossible birches. To Dean’s chagrin, rowans and oaks were also cropping up, although Cas was certain the species they were seeing _shouldn’t grow_ in New Mexico. At all.

“Fucking witches,” Dean grumbled, kicking at a rowan tree. From somewhere, a squirrel leaped out of the tree to grab Dean’s head and chitter angrily at him, causing the grown man to scream, flail, and fall to the ground trying to remove it.

It was adorable.

Cas pulled the incensed creature off and released it, while Dean huffed and tried to dust himself off.

“If I get rabies from that little pile of fur, I’m going to hunt down every squirrel I can find!” He declared, standing up and brushing leaves and dirt off his ass.

“He didn’t bite you,” Cas reassured him, hiding his amusement. “He really didn’t even scratch you.”

“Rabies, Cas,” Dean crossly insisted. “Incurable rabies.”

Cas rolled his eyes. “I’ll stay by you on your death bed,” he replied, trying to take the Hunter’s hand.  
He was not ready for the hot flush that overtook Dean’s face to the tips of his ears, nor how Dean avoided his hand.

“If you say so,” Dean said stiffly, and he walked away.

Watching him, Cas didn’t know what to make of it and just shrugged it off. Humans.                  

They continued to hike until Cas started to get concerned about the time. They had perhaps an hour left of daylight, and he didn’t want to try and guide Dean down an enchanted mountainside with creatures set against them. Even if Dean used his gun, Cas wasn’t sure what it would do against creatures of earth and trees?

He was about to voice his concerns when he felt it: the release from the area of influence.

It was like walking through a thick gel without the metal shell of his truck to protect him.  But when they crossed the line, it was obvious. The trees were suddenly mostly evergreens and pines, and they were more spread out and sparse.

“Well, this looks more like New Mexico,” Dean murmured, surveying the land. “Whatcha think, Cas?”

“The area of influence of this spell is massive,” he replied, staring back at where he knew the gel wall was, “the power to change nature to allow this many non-native trees that would certainly die quickly in this climate is unfathomable.” He sighed. “We need to find its weakness, or, as you would say, we’re fucked.”

 

The trek back to the cabin was faster simply because they knew where they were going. Dean took it upon himself to make sure Cas was behind him, as Cas seemed to have fallen into some sort of deep cavern of thought and had not emerged from it. His feet were moving on autopilot, but there was no one in that cockpit.

Once they got back, Dean added salt lines to the edges of the walls, adding some iron filings to it for additional potency. He had some St. John’s Wort and even Goofer Dust in Baby’s trunk, but that wasn’t an option here. He sighed and hoped it was enough to keep the invaders out. Moving furniture and rugs while your friend was mentally checked out was tough.

When Cas finally came back to consciousness, he blinked and stared at the walls. “It’s a bit more stifling in here,” he commented, “You added iron?”

Dean shrugged and nodded. “Yeah, seemed like a good idea. I mean, they’re technically faeries, right?”

Cas hummed agreement. “I hope that works. Otherwise, we might need to hammer nails into every inch of the walls.”

Grimacing, Dean plopped onto the bed. “That sounds exhausting.”

“Indeed.” Cas seemed to lose focus again, and Dean leaped off the bed to grab his shoulders, shaking him slightly.

“Hey! Hey! Stay with me, Cas! What’s going on there?”

Blue eyes zeroed back in on his and Cas scowled. “There’s something I’m missing. I’m sure of it. I’m trying to think through all the permutations of the situation, but I’m missing a piece.”

“You sure?”

Cas nodded. “We really do need the history of the place.” He cocked his head slightly and narrowed his eyes. “Did you read the booklet we were given? Weren’t there supposed to be historical facts about the area in it?”

Dean gaped at him and dashed over to the small kitchen counter to grab the bags. “Holy shit! I forgot about that!”

He snatched out a booklet and tossed the other to Cas, both of them opening them and scanning the information. 

 

 

> _Pohjola was established as a tiny Finnish community in 1345, following a great magic storm that whisked several inhabitants away to the West. Forced to rebuild, the community struggled to survive and now we live to serve you!_

XXOOXX  

 

> _Pohjola has natural beauty obtained after centuries of cultivation. Many believe the gods of Finland were brought with the people to claim this bit of land in their name._

XXOOXX 

 

> _Pohjola once covered hundreds of acres, but land was lost through war and attrition to large companies and fracking. Acres of sacred trees were lost in the battles, leaving the groves bare._

“I can’t believe this.” Dean sputtered at the information, tiny details tucked in-between things like the activity schedules for the arts and crafts’ barn and the Santa shows with reindeer.

“Seems that there was a large loss of trees.” Cas sighed and settled himself on the (cleaned) couch. “I wonder how long ago the disappearances began?”

“Well, Charlie will get us that info. She pegged the deforestation thing.”

“Perhaps.” He motioned Dean to sit facing him, and he took the small notepad that every place had for notes. “So, definitely Finnish. Definitely nature-based and revolving around trees?” Cas scribbled this down in his nice handwriting, all loops and strong strokes. Dean was not turned on. Nope.

“Gnomes and trolls,” Dean added, “And then you said there's silver birch…”

“… _Taxus baccata_ , _Quercus robur_ …” Cas whispered. “At least the oak is known to grow here, but not to this degree. The European yew has a harder time here, in this soil, as does the silver birch.” He rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “What time is it?”

Dean pulled out his phone and checked. “Not late. About 730.”

Cas stretched out his back and groaned, while Dean checked out the lean lines of his neck, the highlighted egg of his adam’s apple. “It feels so much later than it is.”

Dean was about to agree when there was a knock on the door. He shared a questioning look with Cas and got up to answer the door.

He peeked out the small window and the blonde manager from the main desk of Sampo waved two fingers at him.

Opening the door, Dean cleared his throat and asked, “Can I help you?”

She grinned at him from the patio, her platinum-blonde hair winsomely braided around her head, and wearing a long white dress with a full skirt, the off-the-shoulder ruffle top revealing even more of her skin. Her waist was cinched in with a wide silver belt, all etched ovals and linked squares. She was also carrying a heavy leather coat and the same blood-red cowboy boots, and, honestly, Dean didn’t know how she was standing there in so little when the weather was definitely getting beyond cool and getting cold.  Still, her wide amber eyes framed with long dark lashes were friendly and open above her plump and pink lips, parted in a grin, revealing white perfect teeth. “Hiya! I just wanted to check in with you folks! I heard your friend was sickly this morning?”

If anything, even with just the porch lights and the lights from inside, her tattoos were a bit more visible than before, the one trailing down her right arm and peeking out the bottom of the ruffle looked like a snake made of thunder, jagged and long to the crease in her arm. The one on her chest, where short white cotton strings that seemed to cinch her ruffle up top into a tiny loop, looked like a winter tree, devoid of leaves, while her left arm was a series of symbols that looked like words, probably runes, but not in any language Dean could read.

Regardless of her beauty, the sketchy bitch was standing on the porch with a Stepford Wife high beam on her face. “I just wanted to be sure he didn’t require any medical attention,” she warbled, tilting her head a bit. It made her throat taut and the silver-hammer pendent gleam.

“No, I think he just got a bad burrito or something,” Dean lied smoothly, sparkling right back at her. “He’s feeling much better now, with some warm tea and a bit of rest.”

“Oh, that’s good!” Those amber eyes skimmed over Dean’s body again, pausing at the silver earrings, but she licked her lips enticingly. “While he’s…indisposed…I don’t suppose you’d like some company?”

Dean’s monstr-o-meter suddenly started to tick when the predatory look in her eyes was less sexual and more mealtime than he liked. He opened his gob to say yes and figure out what the creature was up to, when, from inside, came the sound of hurling.

Very realistic hurling sounds that made his nerves crackle to move like hearing a dog puke in the middle of the night.

“Deeeeeaaaan,” he heard Cas whine, “Come baaaaack…”

The puking sounds doubled down. He had no idea what Cas had even eaten to be able to throw up.

He smiled awkwardly, noting Aya’s completely unimpressed expression, and jerked his thumb back into the cabin. “Uh, yeah. Raincheck, it seems.”

“Indeed,” she murmured sadly, somehow making her smile gloomy. If Dean had not gotten lucky earlier, he might have succumbed. She was, after all, quite a beautiful woman.

He also suspected that if he voiced his interest, Cas was going to rip him a new one from gullet to groin.

“Please stop by the lodge soon,” she crooned, making sure her lips were puckered and shiny from spit. “I’ll be waiting to chat.”

Clearing his throat again, he acknowledged her offer before another heartbreaking moan of, “Deeeeeeeeeeaaaaaan…” carried out the door, followed by another round of hacking and liquids hitting tin.

“I really gotta go,” Dean said hurriedly.

She waved her fingers at him as he shut the door firmly, turning to find Cas sitting upright on the couch, looking fine, the tin trash bucket at his feet and a mostly empty water bottle in hand.

Dean narrowed a frustrated glare at him before peeking out the door.

She was already gone.

He breathed out a sigh of relief, and said, “Buddy, I don’t know what the fuck she is, but she’s a _something._ ”

Cas shook his head and looked heavenward. “And he’s supposed to be a good Hunter? Gods save us.”

Dean flipped him off and retook his seat. “Whatever, Tweety. Let’s get this done.”

  

It hit Cas in the middle of the night what he had missed.

The ink stain on the back of his hand had mostly faded, but he remembered the mark well. Thinking on it, he had been certain _Dean’s_ had looked different. Dean’s had looked more like a black widow’s mark on its side, with an X on one end and a single line crossing the other end. He sketched it out on the supplied notepad as he sat and waited for Dean to wake up. In the end, though, he sat tapping the drawing with the end of his pen. It was also bizarrely familiar and all the _almost_ recognition was annoying as a gnat in his line of sight.

Uncomfortable, he decided to send a picture to Charlie in the morning via Dean’s phone. After all, they would be hearing something about the deaths and forests soon enough, if Charlie had found anything to connect.

In the meantime, he debated if he wanted to try and sleep because even if he often doesn’t have to, it’s a generally pleasant experience. It would also allow him to recharge a bit, as living under the Nordic dome’s suppression field was still getting to him. He was not at full power–in fact he was closer to half–and enjoying the warmth of his mate would do wonders for his energy levels.

Or, at least, comfort him.

It was also late into the night, beyond the chime of the witching hour, and there had been no invasion by gnomes. Or trolls. Gods, _trolls_. They left spore around like dogs with diarrhea. Dean was very fortunate that he couldn’t scent it dotting the area around the cabin, nasty little things.

More tired than he had been in a very long time, Cas succumbed to his exhaustion and crawled into bed with a sleepy–clingy–warm Dean and closed his eyes.

 

To say Dean was surprised to find Cas in his bed the next morning was something of an understatement.  He had just become aware of the warm body that curled into his, the scent of laundry dried out in the sun and familiar flowers, perhaps daisies. Despite the déjà vu, he didn’t deny himself the pleasure of tugging Cas closer to get a deeper hit of that scent.

It was beautiful, like standing in a field of wild daisies and the sun heating the earth and grasses.

That actually woke Dean up sufficiently to peer around, seeing as he wasn’t prone to poetry. Ever.

Shut up.

Feeling comfortable and cozy, he chased the scent to its strongest point, his face finding a nest of dark hair and his sighing contentedly at finding it and happily breathing in the gorgeous aroma.

“Good morning, Dean,” came the muffled voice from under his arm. “Can you release me? I wish to make you some coffee.”

Grumbling, Dean considered his options: coffee? Warm Cas?

Warm Cas was beating out the opposition in a serious way, especially when his morning wood decided to get in on the vote, and was all in.

“Dean,” came the amused, graveled voice, “I believe Charlie stated she was going to call today. I also had a small revelation. I think you need that coffee.”

Dean used the palms of his hands, arms wound around Cas’s torso, to map out the finely muscled back, the strong nape of Cas’s neck that led to the messy, lovely smelling hair.

“Dean.” This time there was a warning in the voice. “I’m getting out of this bed to make coffee. Sex can be enjoyed _later_. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up!”

“Dammit, Cas,” he groused, releasing Cas, so he could roll to his back and scrub the sleep from his face. Why was Cas such a fucking party pooper?!

He felt a kiss being pressed to his forehead and, for a moment, Dean seriously pondered what the fuck this was with Cas? Was it a relationship? It was all so…new and–in so many ways–unexpected. He had never really yearned (and what kinda fucked up chick language was _that_ cruising through his head) for someone the way he did Cas. His clean sun-filled scent, the way his body felt under his hands, the dazzling blue eyes, the exquisite puffy pink lips all made Dean want him from top to bottom. And not only want, but to stay with him, teach about modern technology and pop culture. He wanted to wake up every day with the scent of the wild in his nose, musky warm and sleep heavy.

But those thoughts were too heavy for pre-coffee, and he just snuffled into his palms before sitting up and groaning, “I’m up! I’m up.”

He shuffled to the bathroom to take a piss and wash his face. As he dried himself off, he could smell the percolating coffee. Exiting, he grabbed the t-shirt he had been wearing to get a bit of warmth since the nights and mornings were chilly. Just not in bed.

Dean took the large mug of coffee from Cas gratefully and took a sip. It was perfect. They stood in silence drinking coffee, while Cas made pancakes (no fried eggs). Not that Dean was going to complain about the setup. It was even more domestic to see Cas moving around the kitchen here than in his own cabin. Something about the low-slung sleep pants and lack of shirt probably contributed that sense of home. Or the hickeys that covered Cas’s neck and chest might’ve done it. _Mine_ , Dean thought smugly as he sipped his perfect coffee.

“So what did you want to tell me?” He was curious as to what trumped morning sex and was severely disappointed when Cas reached over to the counter and pushed the small notepad he had been writing notes in towards him.

On top was a small sketch that looked familiar, and he stared at it thoughtfully as he sipped. It occurred to him that it looked like his admission stamp and voiced it.

“You are correct,” Cas said, flipping the final pancake onto a plate. “But, look at the next page.”

He flipped the page over and there was a different sketch, one that looked like a box with curled corners, an X in the middle, and, like, weird crosses with round bottoms. “What’s this?”

Cas slid the plate over, along with the syrup, and a fork. “That was my stamp.”

Dean scowled and flipped the page back, shaking his head. “What’s it mean?”

Humming as he cut his pancakes, Cas murmured, “I wonder if Charlie could use her computer thing to figure it out?”

“Computer thing?” Dean gave him a look. “C’mon.”

Cas ignored him and chewed.

“Fine.” He pulled out his phone and took snaps of each, sending them to her with an ASAP tag. He smirked at the line of middle finger emojis she sent back and turned back to his pancakes. 

They were discussing their next move (perhaps investigating the amusement park side of the village) when Charlie finally called back. “What’s up, bitches?!”

Quizzically, Cas replied, “Charlie, you are aware that we are both male and cannot, therefo–“

“Can it, Cas.” Dean chuckled. “More important things, remember?”

Cas opened his mouth, but the look on Dean’s face stopped him cold and he settled for sitting up and pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “O-of course.”

Charlie laughed and said, “Good news, bad news?”

“Bad news,” Dean snapped.

“Okay, well, the bad news is that I think there’s a creature of the woods in Nordic myth called an A-Jay-Tar.”

“A what?” Cas watched Dean’s eyebrows jump up and furrow on his brow.

“A-Jay-Tar.’” She paused. “I _think_ she’s a sort of naga from the description. Like half-human, half-snake.”

“A-Jay-Tar,” Dean repeated, “Okay, what else you got for me. Why’s this bad news? Just tell me how to gank it, Red.”

“Well…” She hedged, “That’s the bad news. There’s nothing about it. She’s a sort of deity, but she’s not formally documented anywhere.”

“Fucking great.”

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch, Dean,” Charlie huffed. “The _other_ _good news_ is that I found some lore that suggests that A-Jay-Tar is usually carried to new places through a…box?” She grumbled. “Gods, this translation program is shit!”

“A box,” Cas put in, intrigued. “What sort of box?”

“I have no idea,” Charlie admitted, “It just says ‘soul of Pohjola, made of Kaleva’s love’ or something.”

Cas bit his lip and thought through what they knew, what they had seen. “Soul of Pohjola and made of Kaleva’s love.”

“Yeah. Anyway, the lore suggests you can trap her back in the box to be carried somewhere else.”

“Okay, so…great! We have a focus! A box!” Dean clapped his hands together and grinned at Cas.

“Chill your jets, lover boy,” Charlie interrupted, the sound of her typing loud. “There's more good news in that the settlement has been there for years and years under different guises. The first mention of them come from the Aztecs who traded with them. The Navajo, too, mention them as… ‘tree gods’?”

Dean heaved a sigh. “Get to the point, kid.”

“You’re so impatient!” She griped. “The point is, their lore says that ‘as long as the trees are untouched, so are they.’ But despite whatever agreement the natives had with the settlement, westward-bound pioneers had also discovered the settlement as a resting spot. From what I gather from the Santa Fe press, people began going missing.”

“How many?” Cas asked.

“Uh, like two or three a year on the road, it seems.” She huffed. “It’s hard to say because of the death rate on the trail West. But people who stopped there did not really discuss it. I’m seriously surprised I found this much!”

“Charlie,” Cas leaned near the phone, ignoring Dean’s amusement. “What about those sketches Dean sent?”

“Oh, those?” There was a slew of typing and a small chirped “A-HA!” before she added, “Those were actually easy. Like the one with curly corners means ‘protection.’ The other seems to be a prisoner binding mark.”

Cas closed his eyes and leaned back. “I see. Thank you.”

“No problem, dude! Dean, you need anything else?”

“Just keep digging for anything good.”

“Well…” She hedged, “There’s like one thing, but that’s fucking insane.”

“Insane is our home ground, Red.”

“True that,” she chuckled, typing away. “Okay, I found it! There’s this…myth? Maybe? A curse? I dunno. So, it says that each one of the trees in the sacred groves of the A-Jay-Tar used to be a human.”

Dean wrinkled his nose in disgust. “That’s just gross.”

“But Dean,” Cas said, realization flashing across his face, “What if…?”

“Yeah, Dean! What if the A-Jay-Tar is trying to rebuild her groves? I mean, I did read that a few acres of land were deforested because the ‘wood was rare’ and worth a lot.”

“We have no proof,” Dean protested, rubbing his forehead. “And that really is insane. How many people would have had to have died for all these trees…!?”

It was as if a light bulb flared above their heads as they stared into each other’s eyes with agonized comprehension. Cas felt sick.

“Holy fuck,” Dean muttered, blankly staring at the covered window that hid the view of the forest. “Thousands…”

 

According to the information Charlie provided, there had been, until the 1990s, only a few disappearances. People from southern Colorado, from the Four Corners, from the Ice Caves suffered a mysterious disappearance once every two to three years. Perhaps a total of five to ten people gone from New Mexico and Colorado without a trace.

Then, in 2001, the disappearances tripled from each area, even spreading further into Arizona and Utah. Instead of every two to three years, it was yearly. Suddenly the numbers were fifteen to twenty people vanishing off hiking trails and campsites.

That was until the incidents caught the attention of the news media and aliens were being blamed. Then the disappearances had slowed down. Or they had seemed to, but 2005, the village of Eagle Fire, AZ, was wiped out in a night, population 271. Not a single survivor, not a single body found. All just gone like a modern Roanoke.

White Lake, NM, population 300, all disappeared without a trace, their breakfasts left rotting on their tables.

Creedy, CO, populations 278, gone. Pets left alone to go feral or die.

Kabal, UT, population 121, wiped off the planet.

Hide nor hair of those people were ever found, but no one was checking satellite footage of the Pohjola forested area. Charlie had sent Dean the images of the village and its forests before the disappearances and after, and the forests did coincidently look lusher.

“Then again,” Dean grumbled out loud, leaning back in his chair, “How would they know to look for trees?”

Cas eyed Dean’s phone uncomfortably. “Could we… I don’t know, perhaps find a bigger screen? I don’t mind being that close to you; however, it is difficult to see.”

Dean shook his head. “Sorry, Cas. Wrong partner. I’m not that good with computers, so I let Charlie bear the brunt of that. And I don’t know how to add my phone to the wifi and connect it to the TV.”

Cas’s eyes had glazed over with incomprehension by the word ‘wifi,’ and Dean snorted. “And Charlie called me a troglodyte!”

“Tr-troglodyte?!”

Dean grinned and bounced out of his seat, crouched and ready. “Yeah, Cas! A total caveman!”

Cas razzed him and then tackled Dean onto the rug-covered floor.

Dean fell back with an “OOF” but regained his footing enough to flip Cas up and onto the bed. Cas landed hard and glared from his upside-down position on the bed, on his back, his glasses half hanging off his face.

“That was hardly fair,” he commented.

“You’re a supernatural creature, Cas. I can’t afford to play fair.” Dean smirked.

Without his glasses, Cas’s eyes were again that jeweled color of blue, a flame dancing within them. Dean shifted forward to look more closely, when Cas grinned wickedly and yanked him onto the bed and rolled to get him underneath him. Before Dean could catch his breath, Cas had him pinned beneath him, arms above his head and legs pinioned with his two thick thighs. Dean arched a brow, the only thing he actually could freely move.

“This hardly seems kosher,” he murmured before Cas gave in and kissed him, his glasses already lost in the tussle.

Like before, there was a desperation to the kiss that felt like Cas was trying to claim him with each thrust of his tongue and each shift of his hips. They were both hard in their jeans, and Dean rutted as hard against Cas, a litany of “Oh yeah!”s coming from his bruised lips.

Cas released Dean’s wrists long enough to roughly pull his shirt off him, and then paused to gaze at Dean, seeming to marvel at him. He drew his hand from Dean’s throat down his chest, pausing to rub Dean’s nipples until they were pebbled and then he bent to lick and suckle each. Beneath him, Dean gasped and sobbed. Cas had not spent that much time on his perky nipples last time, and it was his weak spot.

As he licked and sucked, he moved his hand slowly to unbutton and unzip Dean’s jeans, slipping that hand into the gap in Dean’s jeans and boxers. Dean arched into Cas’s hand as he grasped his hardened cock and stroke it gently.

Dean moaned like he was about to die, ready for things to get hot and heavy, when then there was a knock at the door that startled them both.

“Fuck’s sake, what now?” Dean snapped, the mood gone.

Cas blinked and looked down at him.

“Did you know anyone was coming?” Cas asked, his hand still on Dean cock.

Feeling rather pissed that he was going to miss out on an orgasm, Dean dropped his head back onto the bed and snapped, “No. Gods, I hope it’s not that Aya chick!”

Cas sighed and kissed Dean gently, nibbling on his bottom lip, which got Dean’s engine back up to second gear, when there was a new and more insistent knock.

“If I didn’t know Sam was miles away, I’d fucking blame him,” Dean sniped against Cas’s lips. He bitched as they both sat up and rearranged their clothing, “He’s such a cockblock!”

Grumbling, Dean got off the bed, grabbed Cas by the belt loop to drag him in and kiss him hard, and of course, like magic, there was a third and even _more_ _insistent_ knock.

“This better be important,” Dean snarled under his breath as he turned to walk to the door.

He peeked outside and there was an old man on the porch. He grinned and waved at Dean, not in a fake manner like Aya, but genuine and happy.

Curious, Dean opened the door. “Can I help you, old timer?” He asked semi-politely as the still kinda-hard cock in his pants was reminding him he hadn’t gotten off and if he could get rid of the visitor, he could be back to getting fucked.

But the geezer didn’t look a bit put out by Dean’s tone. The old man tried to peer around Dean and then blatantly pushed past him to find Cas.  

“Oh ho!” He exclaimed in the same odd accent as the villagers, toddling over to where Cas was standing and reaching out a hand. “Yer a new one! Haven’t seen yer kind before!”

Cas scowled at the old man. “My kind?”

The old guy winked and tapped the side of his nose. “Ye ken fool the old biddies, but not me.” He smirked. “Prolly ‘cause I pay attention.”

Blue eyes narrowed at the old guy, and Dean said, “Hey, hey, hey! Who are you?”

The old man chuckled warmly. “Call me Grandpa! It’ll warm me to my bones!”

“Grandpa?” Incredulously, Dean looked to Cas for help, but Cas seemed to still be dissecting the old fart with his eyes. The old man was dressed oddly compared to the rest of the village. His eyes were different colors, one green and gold, the other blue and gold that somehow didn’t look mismatched to the round mashed face of a man with no teeth and a drinking problem. He was also just wearing a plain white tunic with gold braiding at the collar and elbows, his pants a deeper blue than those of the villagers, and on his feet were straw sandals. A large silver pendant that looked like the scythe-thing on the stamp was hanging off a thick silver necklace, something that looked like Aya’s snake tattoo etched into it. 

“So, pretty birdy,” Grandpa continued, his eyes darting over Cas, a sly toothless grin implying deeply uncomfortably things for Dean, “Aside from seducing the lad there, whatcha doin’ on my lands?”

“I thought these lands belonged to the old lady?” Cas asked flatly.

Grandpa shrugged. “They do. Indeed. But _she_ don’t own everything. She wishes she did!” He guffawed at the thought and waved at Dean. “Boy, fetch us some beverages. Talkin’ is thirsty work, it is!”

Disgruntled, Dean pouted at Cas, who merely shrugged, and muttered, “I ain’t your boy.”

Grandpa must’ve had super hearing, as he whooped. “Feisty, that one!” He then tugged Cas over to the tiny dining room table and made him sit down. “So, you comin’ here is an accident? You didn’t see the signs?”

Cas was fidgeting under the guy’s multicolored gaze. “I saw, but I did not heed. We needed to come here.”

Grandpa nodded cheerfully to Dean’s observation, although he still caught the minuscule tightening around the man’s eyes. “Well, you’re not up to no good, right?”

Cas avoided the man’s persistent gaze and stared at the door. “I am afraid I don’t understand what you mean by ‘no good.’”

Grandpa snorted. “ _Paskanmarjat,_ you don’t! What’s your purpose here?”

“Honeymoon,” Dean interrupted, slipping an arm around Cas’s shoulders as he put down the cup of coffee he had made for him. “We came for some peace and quiet!”

“Really?” Grandpa’s eyes narrowed at Dean now. “Well, ye do have the stink of mates. Still. You, man. You sparkle like a Hunter, all prayers and protections sparking off you. What are you doing with _his_ kind?”

“Fucking his brains out,” Dean hissed and hoped that some antagonism would get the guy to move on.

Again, the old guy smirked. “Unlikely with him. Very well, keep yer secrets.”

Cas pushed Dean off and motioned for him to get the guy some coffee, ignoring Dean’s pout. “Whose side are you on, _Grandpa_?” He pointed at the pendant. “Isn’t that the symbol of protection for Ukko, the thunder god?”

Grandpa’s face clouded over, and he leaned his elbow on the table, staring back. “Maybe. Maybe not. And perhaps I’m on the old lady’s side. Or maybe not.” He grinned toothlessly, but still gave the impression of having shark’s teeth. “I suppose you’ll need to bet on it, little birdy. Am I in the gray, or am I in the black? Who knows?”

Dean put the coffee down in front of the old man. “Your coffee’s black, old man. You need cream?”

The grin shifted its focus to Dean. “Nah, I like the harsh bitterness. Unless you’ve got something better?”

Dean shook his head. “But don’t come cockblock us again, and I’ll arrange something,” he said sweetly.

Grandpa chuckled happily and lifted the cup in recognition of Dean’s reply, swallowing down the hot liquid as if it were tepid.

“Ah! Hit the spot!” He pushed himself up with more grace than he had walked in and strode to the door strongly. “You two, best watch yourselves. Herself ain’t the nicest of broads on a good day, and you’ve already made her days more difficult.” He opened the door, paused to look back and wink at them. “You take care of yourselves boys. You’re gonna need a leprechaun’s luck.”

“Leprechauns aren’t lucky,” Dean retorted.

“That’s right, lad. Irish luck ain’t naught but bad luck.” He waved and closed the door behind him.

Dean whirled on Cas. “What the fuck was that?”

Cas shrugged. “I’d guess another god? Possibly Ukko, the thunder god?”

Dean scowled. “Why Ukko?”

Cas chuckled and sipped his coffee. “Because Ukko means ‘grandfather.’”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dragons. Crones. Gateways. Oh shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POV switches start coming quickly as battle ensues. Sorry, I stopped delineating them.

_So now you'd better stop and rebuild all your ruins / For peace and trust can win the day despite of all your losing_

__

The morning had been eaten away by guests and information overflow, and feeling rather cooped up, they decided to go to the grocery store and get something new.

“And,” Dean insisted, “ _not_ vegan!”

While Dean was looking at the bread section, Cas was eyeing the spicy foods. There were curries, green chile recipes, enchiladas, various salsas and atomic red sauces. He was salivating eyeing a Ghost Pepper-Carolina Reaper mix when Dean returned.

“I don’t know about this ‘artisanal bread’ stuff. Can’t they just have normal, sliced white bread?”

Cas hummed agreement and reached for the bottle of unfathomably spicy sauce, his feathers practically ruffling off his back in joy.

“Are you trying to kill yourself?” Dean asked with amusement as Cas put the bottle in the basket Dean was carrying.

“It makes things taste good,” Cas countered. He didn’t often eat because human food generally tasted bland. Hot sauce made everything great.

Cas paused and stepped back, scowling. “There are _eggs_ in that basket.”

“I know,” Dean replied, picking up a tiny box of rice. “I put them there.”

“Dean,” Cas said petulantly, “I _hate_ eggs.”

“I know.” Dean took a box of curry roux too. “So don’t eat them.”

Cas reached in and snagged the eggs, grimacing as he put them on the shelf. “ _No eggs_ , Dean.”

Dean growled and started to reach for the eggs when Cas grabbed his wrist and hissed, “No. Fucking. Eggs.”

Rolling his eyes, Dean left them. “Fine. But I’m getting cereal.”

“And some meat,” Cas replied, drooling. “Ground beef. Maybe make chili?”

“Maybe,” Dean answered, amused at Cas’s enthusiasm for spicy meat. “Bobby used to have a recipe. I might have it somewhere.”

 

They were on their way home from the market when the sky turned gray and then black, clouds rolling in fast like during a tornado, blinding them as it started to pour rain. For once, Dean was driving because Cas said he didn’t want to, feeling uneasy for some reason.

“Was it a tornado you were sensing?” Dean asked loudly, the wind starting to roar like a train.

“No,” Cas answered shortly, face close to the windshield and peering out. “I’m pretty sure it’s _that_.”

“That?”

There was a loud howl followed by deafening bangs as a dragon landed on the road in front of them, maw wide open as it roared. Dean slammed on the brakes and gaped.

“Cas,” Dean stage-whispered as the creature glowered at them, “Is that a fuckin–“

The dragon snapped out a wing that struck the truck solidly, causing it to slide five or more feet to the right. Cas growled, “It’s a fucking dragon!”

Now, Dean was not the sort to freeze up, but–to be fair–he hadn’t known dragons existed. He still wasn’t sure they existed as he gawked at the huge thing: a long, thin wyvern the color of swamp mud, nearing 30-feet long and with serrated foot-long teeth that he was getting _too_ good a look at from _way_ too up close.

“Dean!” Cas smacked him. “It’s releasing a gas! Look!”

Sure enough, a dense black gas was being belched from the creature’s mouth and they watched in terror as it melted whatever it touched: the ground, trees, bushes, asphalt.

“ _Ohfuckohfuckohfuck!_ ”

“Oh fuck, indeed! Now get us the _fuck_ out of here!”

Dean slammed on the gas, and–for once–the old truck sped up with a squeal of tires and the scent of burnt rubber. He tried to dodge around the dragon, but it again clipped them solidly, and Dean could swear it was _hissing his name_ as the truck spun and nearly flipped.

_“Fuck fuck fuck **fuck**!” _

When the truck stopped its spinning, the front was still pointing towards Pohjola, and Dean slammed on the gas again to get her to go.

“Dean! She’s turning this way!” Cas put his hand out and looked to be shooting fireballs at the dragon, but Dean was too busy driving like a maniac to pay too much mind. His duffle with his best weapons was in the cabin! _Idiot!_

“Can you stop her, Cas?” Dean yelled at the sound of at least a ton of dragon pounding after them, making the road tremble beneath them.

“Not like this,” Cas yelled back. “I’d have to transform, but I don’t want to leave you alone.”

There was another roar, another belching of filthy black gas that sprayed towards them viscously, followed by an alarming hiss of acid eating metal. “Fuck, she hit the truck!”

“Just keep going, Dean!” Cas gritted out, half-hanging out the window to throw two-handed fireballs.

They had just sped into the village center when the back tires finally disintegrated and they fishtailed wildly until they slid to a stop against one of the shops.

Panicking, they bolted from the truck and fled to Sampo, eyes wild as they realized the dragon was no longer behind them, and–in fact–no longer in their lines of sight. They had just gotten to the door when Dean felt a sharp pain in his ankle. He collapsed against the wall and as his eyes closed, he saw a tiny gray serpent slithering away.

 

Cas lost his shit as Dean collapsed. A quick glance revealed a tiny set of punctures that had gone through his thick leather boots: snake bite.

But the venom seemed a thousand times more potent than any snake Cas had ever seen. He felt his wings open and spread out in anger, flapping as he cried his distress onto Dean’s paling face, feeling Dean’s slowing heartbeat. He made sure his tears got into Dean’s mouth, swiped at them and dragged his tear-covered fingers over the snake bite.

Then, picking up Dean in his arms, he took to the sky and fled back to the cabin. He carried Dean inside and placing him gently on the bed. He dragged out Dean’s duffle and, carefully, dug out the salt-iron mix Dean had made. He quickly laid down a salt line for the door and looked to find any other weaknesses.

It was as good as it was going to get.

He bolted back to Dean’s side, relieved to see his breathing had improved with his tears. He had almost lost him! He had almost lost his _mate_!

The anger that had fueled him earlier returned and his wings wanted to emerge and flare offensively, to find the wyvern and kill it slowly. To eat its heart and burn the rest to cinders!

Instead, he removed Dean’s boots and socks, crying over the mostly healed puncture wound even more and kissing it gently.

Now, he thought, brushing fingers through Dean’s dusty hair, he just had to wait.

Wait, think, and plot.

 

It was hot, so very hot one moment. The fire burned through him, a liquid fire that destroyed everything in its path, and was eating him whole.

The next moment, there was a flood of cool water. It slipped through him, tasting somehow of love, and not only putting out the fire rain, but fixing everything it touched.

So now, he was sitting on a dock, watching the cool water, sapphire blue and beautiful, pooling into a pond.

“You’re a lucky young man,” cackled a voice next to him.

He looked up to find the toothless old man grinning at him, delight in his eyes, his hammer-shaped pendant gleaming like a star.

“What are you doing here, old man?” Dean asked belligerently. He felt like he was waiting for someone else.

The old man chuckled, his back straightened, his thin wispy hair grew long, honey-blond, and his beard was two shades darker. He no longer looked like an old man, but a young one, maybe Dean’s age.

“Like I said, you’re going to need luck, and it seems the birdy is more than he appears.” The odd colored eyes shone with cunning and amusement. “Since you’re so lucky, perhaps I will help you a bit more?”

Dean frowned slightly. “I don’t know how lucky I am, but right now I know we could use some help.”

The man nodded as if he expected that response and said, “Your chance will be tomorrow, when dawn splits the sky, because I will give you a small helping hand. Look for the gift of Kaleva’s love, boy, and close all the gates.” He winked at Dean. “Do that, and _she_ will bow in defeat.”

“She?”

The man tutted and shook his head. “Oh no, pretty Hunter. You and your lover have your work cut out for you. Far be it for me to interfere.” He paused to consider and winked again. “Well, interfere _more_.”

He disappeared and that’s when Dean heard a voice calling over the water of the pond. “Deean!”

It was familiar and so dear. He rose to his feet and looked out at the pond.

“Deeeaaan!”

“Cas,” He whispered, realizing that was who he was waiting for. “CAS!!”

 

* * *

Dean awoke with a gasp that startled Cas, but he quickly took the washcloth and wiped at Dean’s sweaty face. “Dean, beloved! You’re back!”

Wheezing a bit, Dean nodded agreement and tried to sit up. “What the fuck happened?”

“You were bitten by a serpent and the venom nearly killed you!” Cas growled, his eyes bright flinty blue behind his glasses. “I will _destroy_ that malevolent creature!”

Dean coughed and wheezed a bit more. His lungs hurt like he had breathed in something caustic. “What about the dragon?”

Cas shook his head minutely. “It disappeared when we reached the village center.” He frowned. “Although, no one came out to see what the problem was. That is singularly odd.”

Dean huffed out a laugh and leaned his head against Cas’s chest. He felt bone tired, but not in ungodly pain like he vaguely recalled had knocked him out. “That’s not the only thing odd. How did I survive the venom?”

“I saved you,” Cas whispered, shifting uncomfortably.

Dean leaned back and stared at Cas. “Saved me?”

Cas colored and whispered, “The tears of a Phoenix…”

“…Can heal anything…” Dean breathed out, gently touching Cas’s jaw. “Cas, did you cry for _me_?”

Cas leaned into the touch, kissing Dean’s palm. “Dean, beloved, I would die for you.”

* * *

It took a while to get out what young Grandpa had said over all of Cas’s fussing and kissing. Cas wasn’t surprised by the turn of events.

“He’s not really supposed to be here,” he said wisely, “The population is too low to maintain someone like Ukko, and I bet the magic of those trees is being siphoned elsewhere.”

“Okay, fine. But what about this box everyone keeps talking about?”

Cas didn’t know and shrugged from his cross-legged seat on the end of the bed. “Well, Kaleva’s love… I _think_ that used to be Estonia? Maybe?”

Dean grabbed his phone from the bedside table and googled Estonia. “Main exports are electricity, wood, and wood furnishings.”

“Well, considering how old the village is, perhaps wood then?”

“There’s a lot of fucking wood in this village, Cas.” Dean dumped the phone on the bed and rubbed at his eyes, yawning. “We need more than that.”

“Hmm, perhaps silver?” Cas shrugged when Dean stopped to give him an unimpressed look. “I don’t know, Dean. It’s a suggestion based on materials generally considered sacred or holy!”

“Fine,” Dean acquiesced. “In this village, _surrounded_ by wood, _made_ of wood, and _living_ off wood, where are we going to find a wooden box with silver, big enough to hold some sort of creature?”

Cas cocked his head in thought. “We might be thinking of this incorrectly. I mean, there couldn’t be too many places to locate a wooden box big enough to hold a dragon… but, that’s misleading…?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, just because something is important, doesn’t mean it’s not small.”

Dean narrowed his gaze at Cas. “Are you shitting me?”

Surprised, Cas said, “No.”

“You haven’t seen _Men in Black_?”

Cas blinked. “Seen… what?”

“Men in Black,” Dean insisted. “A movie about aliens. Has a talking dog that said the same thing you just did?”

Cas scowled. “I do not know any talking dogs, Dean.”

Huffing a sigh, Dean raked a hand through his hair. “Fine, you don’t know the movie.” He shifted in his seat and added, “But that means if the box is small, it can be anywhere.”

“You’re a Hunter,” Cas said, “Where do you _think_ you would find it?”

Dean hummed thoughtfully. “I would probably carry it.”

“That’s a good way to lose it. Might fall out of a pocket.”

“Good point.” Dean furrowed his brow in thought. “I’d want it somewhere safe. Probably somewhere I could keep an eye on it all the time.”

Cas scoffed. “And where would that be? The center of the village?”

Dean pondered it for a moment and had an insane thought.

“Why not?” Dean sat up and leaned forward towards Cas. “Why wouldn’t it be? I mean…if I were going to pick a spot in broad daylight where I can always keep an eye on it, wouldn’t the center be perfect?” He snapped his fingers. “Wait, what about…isn’t there a big Christmas tree with presents under it?”

Understanding lighting his face, Cas said, “Yes. There’s a large one. If I remember correctly, it has a couple of wooden boxes that looked a bit out of place, but seemed to just fit in with Pohjola’s theme!”

Looking excited, Dean jumped up. “That’s gotta be it.”

“That seems too convenient,” Cas countered, shaking his head. “It’s inconceivable that they would do something so…obvious.”

Dean grinned. “Isn’t it, Vizzini? So obvious that if anyone _did_ catch on, they wouldn’t think to look there!”

“I don’t know. This seems extremely risky for a probable failure.”

“You’re the one who thought of it!” Dean threw his hands in the air in frustration. “How many presents are there under the tree anyway?”

“Thirty-two,” Cas replied mildly, “There were 10 wooden boxes of varying sizes.”

“Why do you even remember that?”

Smirking, Cas shrugged, standing up to stretch. “I like details.”

“Well.” Dean looked towards the window and the sun was definitely down. “We have like twelve hours before the sunrise Grandpa gave me.”

“Do you feel recovered?” Cas perched on the couch arm, watching Dean carefully.

“Better than usual,” Dean admitted. “I mean, I can’t complain. At least I’m not dead.”

Cas gave him an unimpressed look. “Perhaps we should just relax tonight? Wait to see if Charlie will call?”

“She was just going to send me emails with any other information. The whole dragon/wyvern thing really threw her for a loop.” He chuckled. “You heard her. She was so jealous.”

“It was hardly an experience to get jealous over,” Cas said wryly.

Shrugging, Dean got off the bed. “That is very true.” He took the opposite end of the couch. “Say, Cas… how do you think the snake got to me? Was it waiting?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see it when we ran towards Sampo.”

“Hmm. Isn’t that strange?”

Cas sighed and slid onto the couch properly. “This whole thing is strange. This village is strange. The people here are strange.”

Chuckling, Dean also planted himself on the couch. “People are strange, when you’re a stranger, Faces look ugly when you're alone. Women seem wicked when you're unwanted. Streets are uneven when you're down!” He sang to Cas’s confused face, breaking into giggles when Cas just stared at him. “It’s a song, Cas. Don’t you know it?”

Cas sighed. “Which part of ‘no electronics’ mystifies you?”

Dean snorted with disbelief. “Fuck that. You go to stores. You went to the bar. You got that old radio in the truck. It gets AM at least!”

Giving Dean a dirty look, Cas turned to face the TV. “Movie, Dean. Or I’ll just suggest going to bed.”

Dean half-crawled to him, leering. “How about bed? Sounds good to me.”

Cas pushed him off the couch with one hand, and Dean yelped indignantly. “You’re obviously not at one-hundred percent. Relaxation now; sex later.”

From the floor, Dean grumbled, “Such a fucking party pooper, gods.”

He was, however, smiling fondly into the rug.

* * *

Morning looked to bloom gorgeously blue and yellow and bright.

Dean ate breakfast (there was no more cereal, but hopefully they weren’t staying much longer) and they strolled out to the village, Dean with his duffle on his back and his body covered in anti-creature weaponry. He had even dragged out the enchanted Kevlar he had gotten for supernatural SWAT situations, ignoring the wary look Cas gave him as he buckled it on. They were outmanned and outnumbered and, as a lowly human, he needed any advantage he could get.

“I wonder what they did with my truck?” Cas asked off-handedly as they walked up the gravel access road to the village.

“Probably just moved it to the side,” Dean hazarded, “Not like they don’t know who it belongs to.”

“Yes, but…Aya didn’t show up…and she did show up to check on us before.”

“Maybe she didn’t have time?”

Cas gave him a disbelieving look. “The truck is totaled and abandoned in the middle of the village, outside the horseshoe, in FRONT of her place of business, and she doesn’t checkup? Not when she’s checked in after my merely getting ill?”

“Y’mean, when she came to stare at me like she was a starving dog and I was a prime steak?” He shuddered. “Yeah, I don’t know?”

They strolled into the village's boundary and they both paused to stare.

Everything was closed.

There were no people anywhere.

The truck was gone.

There was a deafening silence, oppressively thick, that made them both shift closer to each other. Dean pulled his pistol, while Cas stayed on guard. “Well, this sucks,” Dean muttered, glad he had racked a bullet in the chamber just in case as he looked around.

“The silence is overpowering,” Cas whispered, removing his glasses and putting them away.

“C’mon. Let’s take a gander at the tree. Get this over with...”

They slowly, _cautiously_ walked towards the Christmas tree, its blinking lights beckoning them. As they walked, they called out what they saw.

“All the shops on this side have their blinds down. Not seeing any life either,” Dean reported.

“Same,” Cas rumbled, his unease making him edgy. “Dean, this feels like a trap.”

Dean snorted. “Damn right it’s a trap,” he hissed, looking past the tree to glance at the frozen pond. It was empty. The amusement park rides were silent. There were no shrill shouts of children or anyone else.

They shuffled further towards the tree, and as they broke the line of the Village's horseshoe, it felt like a bubble burst. The wave of magic was intense on their skin, and Dean yelled out, “FUCK!”

Cas immediately flared his wings out as from out of the woodwork, dozens of trolls and gnomes ran at them, screaming bloody murder and swearing in what Cas picked out as Finnish and Swedish.

He swiped them with his wings, ignoring their tiny screams as they either vanished in a puff of ash or turned to stone to fall hard against the earth.

Dean was at his back, having pulled an old baseball bat covered in iron barbed wire he said had belonged to his father, since there were too many small targets to make his gun effective. Any hit gnomes screeched and exploded midair, while the trolls circled Dean with their elongated teeth and claws out.

Cas made sure to fire at the trolls, knowing that the condensed sunlight of his flame was enough to break whatever enchantment on them to escape turning to stone. “Do you smell coconut?”

Dean glanced over at him and snorted as he slammed his bat against a troll and sent it flying towards Cas. “The trolls. Little bastards are covered in sunblock!”

For some reason, this incensed Cas even more, and he yelled, “Dean, close your eyes!”

Dean booted another troll and shut his eyes, but it didn’t stop him from feeling an intense heat from Cas that made him hiss. “Gods damn it, Cas! You’re going to burn me!”

“Open them,” Cas called back, and when Dean looked around, most of the trolls had been turned to stone, while the gnomes looked dazed by the attack. Dean started swatting them again, turning them into ashy explosions, while Cas had gotten a sword from somewhere and was smiting them with it, lopping off heads and watching them disintegrate into dirt and leaves.

“Think it’s that easy?”

They turned towards the voice to find an eight-foot-tall naga staring menacingly at them from in front of Sampo, her hair in bright blonde braids, her eyes a glowing amber, and her skin a shade of gray that gradated into deep forest green scales that marked her from waist to tail tip. The scales also stretched along her sides, covering her breasts with large, armor-like scales, while tiny scales shone on her neck and throat. Between her breasts was a tattoo of a bare oak tree covered her chest and on her arm was a tattoo of a snake made of lightning.

“Aya?”

She grinned. “Now, little birdy, the name is Ajatar, pronounced _Ai-yah-tur,_ you barbarian fools! The Devil of the Woods! I will remake my groves out of your flesh as I had intended!”

She hissed at them and a dense, black smoke emerged from her lips as she swiftly slithered towards them. Dean yelped as they dodged her, especially as she seemed to be aiming _for_ Dean. She turned her icy eyes towards Cas and hissed again. “I’ll take care of you first, and then I shall have Dean for my new seedling!”

Cas hissed back, his wings flaring up and over in an aggressive shake. “Ajatar!” He growled. “Devil of the Forests, Scandinavian bitch-goddess!”

“Oh, so my fame has even reached the Western shores!” She cried with delight. “I will enjoy picking the meat off your hollow bones, birdy!”

Cas smirked at her for a moment, and said, “I guess we have both been lying.”

Dean had gotten out of the way of Godzilla and Mothra, but his curiosity was getting the better of him as Cas began to glow like a small star. Dean edged his way towards the tree, whacking whatever leftover gnomes dared attack him with needles he had no doubt were poisoned. Behind him, when he peeked, he saw Cas standing with some sort of weird golden outfit that looked like something out of Bollywood, all chains, earrings, and loincloths. On his head was a stacked golden helmet, on his face was a mask that looked like a beak, and even on his feet and hands, golden claws glinted in the subdued sunlight.

He heard Aya howl, “ ** _Garuda!_** ”

Dean turned back around to find more gnomes coming at him. One of the gnomes with a full beard and a familiar face stopped outside his swatting range and cried, “Remember us! We are not all villains! Remember Jari!”

Not knowing what the fuck the gnome was talking about, he still knocked it out of the ballpark and into a flying bit of dirt and leaves.

Then it occurred to him.

 _Jari_. The _toy vendor_ , Jari.

_The gnomes were the villagers!_

His realization made him ill, but he kept moving on, seeing as the gnomes were still straggling towards him with determination. He finally made it to the tree, occasionally fending off another gnome, and began to toss the gift-wrapped boxes away from him.

There was a loud squawk and a roar, and he looked around the tree to find Aya had grown huge leathery wings that reminded him of the wyvern… wait a fucking second? _Aya_ was the fucking A-Jar-Tar?

He was losing his edge!

Dean heard Cas growl, “Why did you kill all those men!? They did nothing to you!”

Aya coughed out a laugh. “They were _worthless_. They’d been tossed away by society to rot! I gave them _new_ purpose, as fertilizer for my groves!” She licked her lips and spat out a glob of green that Cas dodged. It hit the earth and sizzled, eating dirt as it spread.  “The spiritual power in this land is so weak, we had to build almost on top of a dimensional gateway! Aztlán led us here because these _humans_ are not worth saving! None of them! It's time for a _new_ world!”

Cas leaped into the air and flared his wings at her, trying to wrap them around her, but she ducked low to the ground and spat at him again. He blocked it with a wing, and the poison was disintegrated by its heat before touching him.

Aya transformed into her full wyvern shape, flying around Cas to snap at him, getting a mouthful of flames for her troubles. He pulled his sword in and swiftly flew at her, the sword leaving a wound as long as the wyvern. She screamed and threw out a taloned foot at him, but he swiveled and caught her leg with his beak. The sound of it snapping was like the cracking of a great oak, and she howled her rage at him.

Meanwhile, Dean had already pawed through most of the wooden boxes. Some were just cardboard. Others just plywood.

But there was one, the size of a basketball, that was made of plain wood. It looked aged, with dark stains on it that might have been blood, and there were delicate silver latches and hinges on it. He stared at the sigils on the sides but knew from the buzz in his hands that _this_ was the box he needed.

Above him, the Ajatar howled and Dean looked up in time to see her descending on him at great speed. He was going to be either slashed to bits with those claws or crushed by her scaled butt. Neither sounded good so he dashed and rolled to get out of her range, while Cas hammered her from the side, sending her spinning. He looked down at Dean and landed. “You found it!”

Dean grinned giddily, holding up his prize to be seen. “I did, but now what?”

Cas removed a ring from his finger that had a piece of flesh stuck on the prongs. “Put the skin and blood in the box. It should call her home.”

“Fuck.” He gingerly took the ring as Cas zoomed back into the fight, the Ajatar screaming bloody murder as she approached, spitting venom and hissing toxins.

From behind Dean, an old voice said, “You’ve destroyed us.”

He turned to find a tall woman of about 50 staring at him with milky white eyes, her hair completely an aged white, her native costume a pure white gown with blood red embroidery. Her lips were thinned with age in her oval face, wrinkles delineating the edges of her eyes and mouth. She pursed her lips and pointed her walking staff at him, the staff dripping with feathers, bones, amulets in silver and copper. The wood was stained black in a way that reminded Dean of the box: blood had been split to empower it.

“You have destroyed us all!” She pronounced again, fury in her face echoing the fury in her voice. “You petty little _Hunter_! Bringing a _garuda_ here among us! Stopping us from growing our groves!”

“Yeah, lady, you were _killing_ people by turning them into trees! All those villages just gone because you wanted to save the earth. Why didn't you just try recycling?” Dean sniped back.

A dark crackle and a bolt of lightning sprang from the top of the staff, and he eyed it nervously.

“They were transformed into _new_ life! _New forms_!” She shrieked, power collecting around her in a crackling aura.

“Being a tree when you used to be human ain’t much of a transformation, if you ask me.”

“No one asked you, mortal!” She sneered. The old woman raised the staff and swiftly swung it around, knocking the box from Dean’s hand and numbing his fingers. “As trees, they gave out fruit of the earth and lived again in service to the gods! They were glamoured into respectable beings, who served the earth and man! But you destroyed them! It is on you that the spirits of the trees are dead!”

Dean felt sick as he realized what she was saying. “You turned them into trees and then into fucking gnomes?! That’s fucking sick, lady!”

“You don’t know what you’ve done,” She whispered harshly, her blind eyes accusatory. "You doom us all. All this time fighting for this realm, this earth...and you've thrown it away because you do not understand."

Behind him, there was an earthshaking boom and Dean turned his head long enough to see Cas crawling out of the remains of the Santa House. As he returned to battle, his wings accelerated the burning that had started with his landing on the House, and the building began to burn in earnest, black smoke reaching into the sky.

“I only know what I’ve got to do,” Dean said, glaring at the old bitch. She raised the staff again and he bolted, scooping up the box as he ran and dodging bolts of lightning. He ducked behind one of the old vendor houses, panting hard, and looked down at the box.

He had been clutching the ring in his fist and he forced the box open with one hand, scraping himself on the number of silver enclosures, and unceremoniously shoved the ring into the box with the other. “Hasta la vista, dragon bitch!”

Above, there was a scream of pure rage, and Dean pushed the box as far away from himself as he could. The old crone came around the corner just as he did and, seeing the box pulsating power, also cried out in denial.

At that moment, the air seemed to explode, the atmosphere making his ears pop as the cabins began to vibrate and shake. Dean backed off as the cabin he had hidden behind fell apart as if being dragged into a black hole and disappeared into the box like the fucking house in Poltergeist. The remains of the Santa House slammed into the box still burning, quickly followed by the other houses, the Christmas tree, the amusement park, the pond guardhouse, and everything else, leaving behind the three gateways Cas told him about standing in the air. The village and all its material existence shattered against the magical vortex à la Monster Squad, splintering down into matchsticks, not least being the dragon. Caught in the pull of the vortex, she clawed and fought against the force.

“No! This cannot be!” She screamed as the dragon form was ripped from her body and sucked into the gyre, leaving the naga form crawling for mercy. “I have lived millennia! I cannot be defeated like this!”

She ripped at the earth, her fingers bloody as the naga form sloughed off her and into the box's whirlpool, leaving the beautiful blonde woman.

“You miserable human!” She shrieked, her wild amber eyes narrowed with fury and fear as her human hands audibly snapped and broke while she tried to stop being swallowed, “You have no idea what you’ve done! I will be back! I will kill and plant you!”

And then her humanity was gone, shed from her like the other forms, until a slim translucent viper hung in the air and was swallowed whole, the box snapping shut behind her.

“You do not know what you have done.”

Dean turned and found the old woman–Lori, he remembered–glowering at him with blind eyes, holding the staff that she had tried to strike him with. But the woman looked to be in her eighties or nineties now, her hair thinned to wisps, her face sagging in pouches. She no longer stood tall, as her back was bent like a prawn, her teeth were yellowed in dark gums.  She jeered at him as she stepped back towards the three gates standing alone in the air: one of fresh wood glowing gold, one of woven dead white birch, and one of black iron.

“I will remember this. And you and that _garuda_ will regret it. You will rue crossing Louhi!”

Before he could stop her, she quickly stepped into the black gateway. It collapsed and disappeared behind her.

Cas landed next to him, panting heavily and smelling of blood and flame. "Sorry, the dragon knocked me back so far into the woods, it took me a while to return to you."

Dean shook his head, feeling exhausted. "That creepy Lori witch got away, but not without dropping a line like a stereotypical villain."

As they spoke, the old man, Grandpa, hobbled out of the wooden gate labeled “ _Kalewala_.” He looked the same as the first time they had seen him, his grin no less mirthful than before.

“Not bad, lads. But Louhi is a vengeful woman. And she’s right.” He pointed at the last gate, glowing a sickly gray-white and labeled “ _Hiisi.”_ “This has been left open and, unintended, it will cause great harm to the human world.”

“What does that mean? Hissys?” Dean asked quietly, afraid of the answer.

“Not 'Hissys," Dean. 'Hiisi' is pronounced 'He'z' and that is the doorway to where the dead are tormented,” Cas answered tightly, “It is Tartarus, Naraku, a place of torment. We are already almost on top of one of the biggest dimensional doors between this world and the next, thanks to Aztlán. If this gateway is left here unattended, it will eventually ooze out dead things and slowly try to devour this world.”

“And _you_ need to figure out how to close it,” Grandpa said. He scowled a bit, dug in his pockets, and motioned Dean to come closer.

With Cas at his back, Dean did as beckoned, opening his palm as the old man motioned him to do. Something smooth and metal was dropped into his palm.

Grandpa called Cas over as well and rummaged in his pockets to find whatever it was. He grinned and dropped something into Cas’s palm that had him looking unsure and uncomfortable.

Gleefully, Grandpa chuckled. “That’s all I can do for you two. You’ve made a mess, you’d best clean it before it gets too ugly.” He paused. “Well, too ugly _again_.”

They opened their mouths to ask questions, but with a sweep of his hand, the old man shoved them into the white-gray doorway, and it turned black behind them.

“Good luck, lads,” Grandpa said. He grunted as the stooped to pick up the wooden box and huffed as his hip twitched as he carried it to the Kalewala door. “You’re surely going to need it.”

**TBC**


	9. NOTES AND COMMENTS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna blather

A/N: The idea for this story came from my 1) wanting to learn a new mythology, 2) wanting to learn more about Finland and my friend, Shipperslist's homeland, 3) because I wanted a monster that had not been used or seen before.

So with a great deal of consultation with Shipperslist, we settled on Ajatar (Ai-yah-tur) because she (Ajatar) is a well-known creature in Scandinavia, but not so much anywhere else. Also, Shipperslist mentioned that the description was kind of vague and I could play with the idea.

Except I'm a research nerd, and I stressed her out a lot asking for translation help, information help, and better translations for things than I was finding online. 

Thus, this entire endeavor would've been null if it were not for the wonderful Shipperslist.

That said, the **Ajatar** of myth really doesn't have much of a backstory, so a lot of what I put in here (wooden box thing and forests) was more being a morbid cuss. She does turn into a half-snake (but not  _technically_ a naga), and she does turn into a dragon, and, yes, she turns into a beautiful woman. She also spits disease and death, and she suckles devils at her breasts. I really like her.

 **Louhi** (pronounced "Low-he") is also from Finnish myth. She is a goddess of Pohola, which is the land where the most beautiful women live and where the brave heroes of Kalevala go to win brides. Except Louhi is a hardcore witch goddess and doesn't take that shit lightly. Don't mess with Louhi.

 **Ukko** is a supreme god, but Ukko (ew-ko...sort of) does mean "grandfather." He's supposed to be a benevolent god and the Ukko's Hammer is like Thor's hammer. It is also used as a protective amulet. His tree is the oak.

If there are any others you'd like to hear about, please ask.

Finally, I know this story moves very quickly. Part of me wanted to focus as much as possible on Cas and Dean, and not the case so it ended up like this. If you have CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, please drop me a comment. I'm very open to CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM. 

* * *

 **Anima** – soul

 **Garuda v. Phoenix** : There is a difference between a Garuda and a phoenix, although I crossed the mythologies for my own needs. Sorry. The Garuda comes specifically from Hindu/Buddhist mythology, and it is literally a birdman. The phoenix is just a bird, but because of the way creatures are represented in this world, Cas could be misconstrued as a phoenix. But Garuda are powerful warriors whose mortal enemies are (coincidentally) naga. 

 **Hell:**  Gehenna, Sheol, any of those words in the place of "hell" means, really, Hell.

 **Kaleva’s Love:** Historically Estonia is considered Kalevala (Kaleva’s homestead) and their main export? Wood. I added silver because it is the most typical "protective" and "anti-supernatural" metal.

 **Metsähiisi** : Forest troll (TBH: there is some hard translation issues because of the word _hiisi_. It is like the word  _oni_ in Japanese, where it has a broad meaning of either "ogre," "troll," "demon," or even "ghost." Just depends.

**Red Headed Woman chorus:**

 

> A redheaded woman  
>  A redheaded woman  
>  It takes a redheaded woman  
>  To get a dirty job done

 


End file.
